Queen Bee Colour Year
Color Coding System: Beekeepers use a standardized color code based on the year the queen was born (e.g., white for years ending in 1 and 6) to quickly determine the queen's age and ensure proper record. Bee queens are marked with a specific colour according to their year of birth. This helps beekeepers to know exactly how old the queen is.
Learn how queen bee marking color codes have evolved over the years, from early methods to standardized systems, and discover best practices for accurate marking. The color guide for marking bees is based on the year the queen was born, with five traditional colors used: white, yellow, red, green, and blue. This system helps beekeepers ensure they are dealing with the same queen over time by adhering to a standardized color scheme.
Marking Queens – Long Island Beekeepers Club
Queens born in years ending with 1 and 6 use a white posca pen, while years ending with 2 and 7 use a yellow posca pen. One thing a beekeeper needs to know how to do well, is mark a Queen bee. There are many different ways a beekeeper can do this, but it all comes down to knowing the proper color for that year, having the best marking tools that are non-toxic and still highly pigmented, and then getting that colorful dot on the back of your Queen gently.
Sounds easy enough, right? Well, we are here to share. Red - years ending to 3 or 8 Green - years ending to 4 or 9 Blue - years ending to 5 or 0. Being the busy beekeepers we are, we use little phrases or poems to remember the order of the colours, for example, in English we use W hy Y ou R ear G ood B ees as a mnemonic.
Queen bee marking guide | Bee keeping, Queen bees, Bee
What are the phrases you use to remember the colour order? By marking new born queens with a specific color to each calendar year, beekeepers, wherever they are in the world, can identify the age of the queen bee by the color of her mark. As queen bees very rarely live more than 3-4 years, 5 colors are all that is needed. Details of how to mark your queens, or spot the age of a queen bee in your colony or swarm.
The queen bee does have a variety of features that allow beekeepers to distinguish between the queen and worker bees, but when working with thousands of bees within the hive it can be quite difficult to identify the queen and a color dot makes this much easier. Additionally, a specific color is used each year for the queen bee color dots, so the mark can tell the beekeeper the birth year of. Queen bee marking follows a standardized color code system based on the year's last digit, using five distinct colors in a repeating cycle.
Colour codes used in marking honeybee queen in years with different ...
This system helps beekeepers quickly identify a queen's age and track her performance, which is vital for hive management.
