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I ordered an Italian queen from Kelley bees, it arrived yesterday with a white dot. Is this queen really 3yrs. old? Should I be concerned?
Old queen from Kelleybees???
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Both of those color schemes are exactly the same. Both are showing white as being years 1 or 6.
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Oops! 
They are the same, but the mnemonics they use as a memory aid start with different years.
Why not contact Kelley and ask them why the queen is marked with that color? Perhaps they use that color consistently.
They are the same, but the mnemonics they use as a memory aid start with different years. Why not contact Kelley and ask them why the queen is marked with that color? Perhaps they use that color consistently.
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Will do, Thanks.
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Ok, I just called and they said that it is a new queen but the supplier they get them from decided to mark them with white this year. So, you are right Radar, not everyone adheres to the standard colors. Kind of silly not to though.
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I read that WHITE is easier to spot and used more often.
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Maybe it's just me, but I've never seen a Kelley queen marked with anything but white no matter what the year.
HTH
Rusty
HTH
Rusty
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We mark ours according to which line they are from, and don't follow the year scheme at all.
Jh
Jh
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Thanks for all the replies. i feel much better now.
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We talked about white marking when I was at Kellys on Saturday. Most of the marked queens that Kelly sells, are marked green this year. However, one queen supplier marks with white, and bee de la prairie got one of those. The queen is not three years old.
cchoganjr
cchoganjr
I got 10 packages from Kelleys this year. White was the only mark available. Which is not a bad idea. 4 of those went queenless, and 3 more tried to supersede the queen. 3 successfully requeened. All but one of the remaining ones I pulled the queen out and I did a recombine.. One is a drone layer that Im going to address this Friday. One queen is struggling in a nuc. When I get warmer weather, if it doesn't change, im taking a hive tool to her, or maybe keeping her in case one goes queenless
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It has been a bad year for early queens. The late, extremely cold weather in the South, wrecked havoc with queens and packages.
cchoganjr
cchoganjr
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Yep...the March queens I got stunk...to the last one. The April queens were very good. Same supplier.
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Yea, I talked to the girl at Kelley's and she said there was one supplier that only used white. I thought it would have been very odd to ship a three year old queen.
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