To make her easier to locate in the hive, the queen bee is usually painted with a small dot of colour on her thorax, as shown in this video. The colour also helps the beekeeper to keep track of the age of his or her queens, as a different colour is used for each year in a cycle of five.
White is used 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 years ending in 5 or 0. This system is widely accepted and used by queen breeders and beekeepers the world over. The queen bee in this video is clearly a 2006 model, as her white spot tells us.
It is important to know the age of the queen because her most productive egg-laying time will be limited to the first few years of her life. Queens are commonly replaced every year or two, in order to maintain a strong colony.
This video is courtesy of Brian’s Urban Bees blog, and the bees are residents of Queen’s Park, London, UK.
Hi workerbeej, Just noticed that you have linked to my video. That’s nice. I’ll get a link back to you from our blog. Like your site. Lots of good info. Cheers. Brian and Alison
Urban Bees is a really interesting and beautiful blog, Brian — full of good reading. And your photos are incredible — that photograph of a swarm cell is one of the best I’ve seen!
I am just starting to raise bees I have 3 hives and am purchesing 2 more and that will be 5 to start with. I need all the information I can get and this is the first time that I saw a bee coming out of the cone. I also saw the queen .
Thanks for the information