Some beekeepers feel that marking your queens can cause rejection and risk injury. Is it worth it?
First, let’s ask the basic question. Do you need to mark your queen? No, you don’t “need” to, but you may want to as when doing an inspection, it helps to locate her quickly not only to make sure she’s still there and healthy, but it’s also a way to keep tabs on her age and if she’s been replaced.
What are the risks to marking the queen?
Well first, in order to mark her, you have to catch her! Either with a queen marking tool, queen clip, or by simply picking her up with your fingers if you’re confident enough. That incurs some risk of injury just trying to capture her. Especially if you miss after the first try in catching her, she will typically run considerably faster! The worst thing you could do is squish her.
Ok, so you managed to catch her with a queen marking tool. Now you have to carefully push the plunger up to gently hold her back against the plastic bars. She will be constantly moving around so you have to be mindful of the position of her body and legs while pushing the plunger up and not press too hard. Just enough to get her thorax in an opening for marking. Then, using a queen marking pen, gently put a dab of ink on her thorax. Make sure it doesn’t flow out of the pen too fast, you don’t want to paint her whole body!
Ok, so you caught the queen without injuring her and managed to get a dot painted on her back and allowed the paint to dry before releasing her back to the hive. All is well, right?
Well, there is still a slight chance the bees that tend do the queen may consider her damaged with this paint on her back. And yes, they will try to remove the paint from her, so make sure the paint has had time to dry before putting her back in the hive. But in rare cases, the queen may be forced to leave the hive to be replaced. Sometimes it’s difficult to prove this is the case when the hive is fairly new or if you recently purchased a queen and introduced her. Perhaps the hive rejected her after all and it just so happened to be after she was marked. Or maybe there were other factors in the hive that the queen found unacceptable and swarmed on you.
Overall, I still accept the risks and mark my queens. Although if I miss catching her on the first or second try, I tend to leave her be and try again another day. No need to stress her more than need be if she’s doing her job.
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