That Reminds Me

Today was the day that I decided to mark the queen in my new hive.Since the colony had come from a nuc, the queen was unmarked. I used a red pen to mark her - red is the International Colour Code colour for 2008, but strictly speaking she would have been born and mated in 2007.

Having found the queen (not an easy task!) she is gently pressed down onto the frame she is on with a threaded marking cage (also known as a baldock cage), and a dot of colour applied to the back of her thorax. More information on queen marking is available on Dave Cushman’s Clipping and Marking page.

This is actually a relatively easy thing to do, but care must be taken not to either squash the queen, or get so much paint over her that the bees reject her. Its worth testing out marking on a few drones (something I had the chance to do at the EMBA hive inspection the previous year) to get the hang of the process.

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The bees were delivered today!The bees had been transferred on smith frames into my cedar national hive from a nuc box at the apiary site in Currie a few days earlier, and were brought to the University site today. 4 smith frames in the centre, surrounded by 4 undrawn national frames, with 1 extra frame of honey (smith) on the outside.

So far I haven’t done much with them, but they seem quite aggressive, following quite a distance from the hive.

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