Isn’t it time we gave up on the idea of yearly colour codes, if you have less than 20 hive you should be keeping accurate records and know the age of your queen from the notes.
even as a commercial beekeeper I often mark white overwintered or spring queens, my staff are better than I and stick to the coloured system, they overmark my white with the year colour.
Mark - what do you use? Quick dry? Non-toxic?
Yes my queens are now fluorescent green or pink if a swarm.
I always use a marking cage for safety but even then small queens can slip through so I always have the queen directly over the hive. I like to leave new queens a while if I notice there really quick and run about but never lost one or killed one to date but it will happen to us all
The 5 Peas come to mind. I hadn’t which was a major part of my problem . having set off to do one job (unite hives) I changed plan on the spur without any prep and picked up the queen. It was then whilst fumbling to get my new fangled one handed bee marking cage out of my pocket that I dropped her.
I had one in a cage the other week put the cage down then went in my pocket for the pen, I picked the cage back up not looking properly and her head was hanging out and I squished her when I picked her up. She was hardly moving and when I put her quickly back she actually fell into the hive through the frame. I thought I killed her. I inspected a few days later and she had fully recovered laying as usual. Phew
I squished mine last weekend too! Will find out next weekend if she recovered.
