Discover the importance of queen marking colors, learn common methods and regulations, and find expert advice on choosing the right color for your apiary in this comprehensive guide. Bee Queen Marking: Understanding Colors Queen Marking Importance: Marking queen bees with a colored dot or sticker helps beekeepers easily identify and track the age and presence of the queen in the hive, which is crucial for effective hive management. The pens offer precise application with the larger tip, allowing beekeepers to mark Queen bees easily and accurately, without harming them at all.
The vibrant colors of the marking pens make it super easy to spot a marked Queen bee on a frame full of worker bees, helping in your hive management and identification. Learn how to mark a queen bee with step. A beekeeper needs to know how queens are labeled.
The marking of queen bees in color by year will help the beekeeper not to get caught by fraudsters, who often mark queen bees as they please, or sell old queen bees together with bee packages instead of the declared young queen bees. 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.
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. The international queen marking colours code was created to allow beekeepers to mark their queens using a code which all other beekeepers, wherever they were in the world, would understand. The colours are used to show which year the queen was born in, they also help to enable beekeepers to spot the queen when doing a hive inspection.
Discover how bee marking colors improve colony management, disease monitoring, and genetic research while understanding the science behind color theory and its impact on bees social hierarchy and behavior. Queen bee marking colors are chosen alphabetically, with the most common being blue for 2025. The color guide goes by the year the queen was born, with the most common color being red for queens born in 2013 or 2018.
For example, queens born in 2013 or 2018 would be marked with a red color. 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.