Here's one for all of you expert beekeeps......to mark or not to mark a queen in a feral hive. As I have gotten older and my eyesight has gotten worse I decided to mark a queen in a trap out that I recently made. I was fortunate that I was able to get the queen so I decided to mark her this is the first time I have ever marked a queen, I thought it would make her easier to find. After a couple of weeks I decided to check the hive and did not find her waited a few more days and checked again and did not see her again, there were no new eggs or larva in any of the frames.
Ordered new marked queen, did all of the normal routine they had released her but I noticed the workers were picking at her thorax like they were trying to remove the mark. One week latter I checked the hive again and no queen to be found very few eggs or new larva either.
So I pulled three frames and placed them in an observation hive and placed another marked queen in this hive they released her on the sixth day everything was just fine for a couple of days she went about performing as normal.
Day nine rolled around an I noticed the workers and nurse bees started picking at the mark and really giving the queen a hard time.
Day eleven rolls around and there was no "LONG LIVE THE QUEEN". She was on the landing perch dead as a mackerel!
I discovered that the mark was gone and her thorax was almost totally destroyed. So I decided to give it one more shot and re-queened the observation hive with an unmarked queen, the results after three week is a hive with a thriving queen who has filled both sides of two frames with eggs and larva and is laying in the frame with stores as they consume the honey from this third frame.
OK....all of you experts tell me why this happened and why should anyone ever mark a queen....the way I see it (and at my age it is often hard to do) why would you add something that is unnatural as a mark to your queens!
I'm not the old beek and very new to it,opposed to many on this board
But I say your bees were/are very Hygienic
and they took the hide off while trying to
Clean her
Tommyt
I can't wait to hear what the experts have to say about this!
I have never heard of this happening.
Larry
Your experiences sound a little odd but not entirely out of the ordinary. Perhaps your ink and your queen provider's ink was a lil too smelly. But what do I know, I've never marked a queen.
...JP
New one on me.
i don't mark them. can't help you with that one :-D
to be honest, i don't even look for them..... except in the observation hive......
What type of marking component did you use?
Paint and finger nail polish are the more common types used.
Some substances can be like acid when placed on a bee....result dead queen.
I've never been a believer in marking a queen, and am quite oppossed to wing clipping.
But then I like to keep my bees in as close to feral conditions as Langstroth style equipment will allow.
I bought a nuc this spring, when I asked if the queen was marked, I was told that she was, but sometimes the others bees "eat" the mark off. For the record, she is still marked and doing great.