Queen Marking Pen (Yellow, Green, Red, Blue & White)
- Queen Making Pen - five colours available
- Non-toxic, Water-based marking pen, allows Beekeepers to readily locate and track their Queens
- Colours: yellow, green, red, green, blue & white
WHY MARK YOUR QUEEN?
So you can see if she has swarmed or been superseded
This sounds counterintuitive – how would you be able to find the coloured spot if the queen has swarmed or been replaced? Well, you can’t. But knowing that the queen in the hive IS marked, you will know that any unmarked queen found in the hive is not the queen you had there originally. This is helpful particularly at times when you haven’t managed to get to the bees in a while and they could have swarmed and requeened or even superseded in between inspections.
So when she swarms into a bush, you know which hive she came from!
Perhaps combined with using numbers and as long as you have kept good records about which queen is in what hive, this prevents you from having to go through all your colonies to determine where the most recent swarm has come from. You should be able to spot a marked queen fairly easily in a swarm as there are fewer bees and no combs to hide round the back of.
For breeding
For beekeepers rearing queens of specific strains, using colours as well as numbers can help to keep track of breeding lines.