Marking a queen bee is an essential practice for beekeepers, making it easier to identify her during hive inspections and track her age and productivity. Try to spot the queen bee, though it can be challenging in a busy hive. She is longer than the workers, with a slim abdomen and a calm, steady movement. If you can find her, you may choose to mark her with a small dot of coloured paint on her thorax. This makes future inspections easier. You could catch her with a

Queen Trapper. Be extremely gentle—injuring the queen can jeopardise the entire colony.

Professional Beekeepers use a colour-coding system. It is a colour rotation scheme to mark queen bees, which follows a five-year cycle:

Queen Bee Marking Colours

Colour Year Ens In

White 1 and 6

Yellow 2 and 7

Red 3 and 8

Green 4 and 9

Blue 5 and 0

For example, if the year is 2025, the colour would be Blue. This system allows beekeepers to easily identify the age of the queen and plan for replacements.

But for a hobby beekeeper with a couple of hives, any colour will help to quickly locate the queen.