Marking
Lexikon
Marking is what beekeepers call marking the queen.
Marking is what beekeepers call marking the queen. A small, light disc, usually made of opalith, is glued centrally onto the top of the thorax, or alternatively a dot of paint is applied. The marking does not hinder the queen but makes her immediately visible on the comb and at the same time reveals her age. Marking is usually done shortly after emergence or at the first handling of the young queen. For valuable queens, the disc additionally carries a number.
The color follows the year in which the queen emerged. Internationally, five colors are used in a fixed sequence: white, yellow, red, green and blue. They are assigned via the last digit of the year. White stands for years ending in 1 or 6, yellow for 2 or 7, red for 3 or 8, green for 4 or 9, and blue for 5 or 0. Anyone who remembers this rule needs no year table at all, since the cycle repeats unchanged every five years.
That five colors are enough is due to beekeeping practice, not a fixed age limit. A queen can well live for several years, but her laying performance and pheromone output decline. This is why many operations already requeen deliberately after one to two years. The blanket claim that a queen never lives longer than five years does not hold up. For everyday purposes, the five-year cycle is nonetheless sufficient.
Beginners regularly encounter one misunderstanding: if an unmarked queen is suddenly found in the colony, this is not necessarily an error in the hive record card. Colonies also replace their queen themselves without swarming. This silent supersedure often goes unnoticed, and the new queen naturally carries no disc. Anyone who marks consistently and notes the color will notice such a change immediately.