Day glow orange for me. Rely on my notes for the year...
Day glow orange for me. Rely on my notes for the year...
There is a light green might give that a go or the fluorescent greenOriginally Posted by Bumble
Drumgerry's pink sounds horrible plus it's not on the official list
If I wasn't so cack handed I might have resorted to the disks
I might try an alternative method using only white
First I might paint the right foreleg white
then next year the one behind it and so on
that should work with a big white spot on the thorax
I'm another that just uses the colour I have to hand for the bees themselves and my notes and the hive numbering to keep track of the queens.
All my queens are marked with red but the hive roof, which is numbered, follows the queen.
I can see the value of colour/numerical marking for queens raised in a very well defined breeding programme -where you need to be sure that the mated queen you take out of the mating box is the same animal that emerged from the cell -obviously this means marking the virgin before she's allowed freedom to wander around the comb (unless you've got an excluder on the door in which case it's enough to paint her before she flies) but for me it's enough, at present, just to cut a wing as a marker; as Manley wrote, they never regrow.
Does anyone know of research which proves that marked queens are easier to find? I imagine that it would be far too subjective between different operators to be conclusive either way...
I think you're right ... too subjective. But there is a clear difference ... more experienced beekeepers that actively rear queens - so are used to spotting nervous virgins (no jokes please) or finding (and removing) unmarked queens during re-queening of colonies - are often much better at it than those that do not. Practice makes perfect. It's a very useful skill. The look on a beginners face when you say - lifting the frame gently out - "She's on this one somewhere" and then being proved right is priceless.
Of course, if she's subsequently found on a frame of stores after two sweeps through the box you can also end up looking a right prat
Definitely a colony 'hours' thing rather than duration of owning colonies. I question how truly useful the mark is in helping people find queens because we often read about how difficult some people find the practice of spotting queens whether they're marked or not, hence the multitude of queen finding tips and tricks which have been put forward over the years. I wonder whether it may be shape/movement more than a dot of paint which often catches the eye first, but people aren't realizing that because they then see the mark and just assume that that is what caught their attention in the first place.I think you're right ... too subjective. But there is a clear difference ... more experienced beekeepers that actively rear queens - so are used to spotting nervous virgins (no jokes please) or finding (and removing) unmarked queens during re-queening of colonies - are often much better at it than those that do not. (prakel's edit: PERFECT!!!!
Last edited by prakel; 19-10-2013 at 10:04 AM.
I think your plan masterbk where the white gets a second dot of green might be worth a go
Prakel might have something when he pointed out finding the queen is easier the more practice you get.
It might be a catch 22 though if you don't mark them your missing a chance to spot them in the first place
I have ended this year with 26 queens running around in hives perhaps some won't make it but I will be glad of the faint remnants of marking next spring
I can see the advantage of the clipping but although I don't give them names Melifera Crofter's Queen Spud I don't want to chop bits off them
I would tend to agree. If I could only do either marking or clipping, I would chose to clip.
One problem with marked queens is that if you are focused on looking for a marked queen you will likely fail to see an unmarked one.
The skill in finding queens is not so much putting a big mark on them, as understanding where they are likely to be by reading the colony.
A frame with emerging brood is a good bet. So is a frame with a high density of bees. Pollen frames or frames of stores - very unlikely.
There are usually only 3 or 4 likely frames out of the 11 so you need to concentrate on those.
That's the trick. The people who are looking for 'a big bee' are much less successful especially if the colony is full of drones.I wonder whether it may be shape/movement more than a dot of paint which often catches the eye
Last edited by Jon; 19-10-2013 at 10:26 AM.
...that was fatshark actually! Although I am in total agreement with him.
I'm really not sure that marking (general production queens) does anything other than retard the development of (a beekeeper's) other senses -if a queen is marked are you (that's a general 'you' not 'YOU' DR!) developing queen observation skills or looking for the mark? All speculative on my part of course.
Last edited by prakel; 19-10-2013 at 12:32 PM.
Gail, my new beekeeper who I gave bees to this year spotted the queen right away
We were checking the bees about half an hour after I took them out of the back of the car
She had a red dot on her ,was quite large and light coloured
Can't remember what the queen was like though
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