In our second virtual hive inspection this year at the Morningside Community Garden, we saw the queen!!!
I do have a video clip of my falling and rolling down the hill, but I'm not going to share it!
A number of issues came up in our discussion as we viewed this inspection last night. Here they are:
1. Marking queens: It's great to mark your queens and if you can, you should for several reasons.
First, it's much easier to find her if she is marked. She does move a different slow regal way than the rest of the bees and she's 1/3 longer than workers, but she is very, very hard to find and marking her helps.
Second: There is a marking code for the color on the back of the queen. It determines the year she was born so marking your queen helps you know how old she is.
Third: There's lots of equipment you can get to help you mark a queen. Some items are the queen clip, the queen muff, and there are even queen marking kits.
The color for 2021 queens is white. Last year's color was blue.
2. Walt Wright devised the idea of checkerboarding.
3. Australian beekeeper on how to prevent swarming in your beehive. Remember his seasons are the opposite of ours in North America.
