Understanding the Colour/Year Chart for Queen Bees

Beekeepers use a paint marking pen to mark their queen to find her easily in the hive instead of trying to find her for hours on end.

Marking your queen can be a good way to reduce the time in the hive as you are only looking for a coloured dot and not the actual queen, mistaking her for a drone (common mistake!).

It can also help in regards to knowing if the queen has swarmed and a new queen has taken over, as the new queen will not have a dot on her thorax if you were to find a new queen.

The 5 colours that breeders use to mark queen bees are;

White, Yellow, Red, Green & Blue.

The colours change every year and cycle around every 5 years.

White is used in years ending in 1 or 6. e.g. 2021 & 2026.

Yellow is used in years ending in 2 or 7. e.g. 2022 & 2027.

Red is used in years ending in 3 or 8. e.g. 2023 & 2028.

Green is used in years ending in 4 or 9. e.g. 2024 & 2029.

Blue is used in years ending in 5 or 0. e.g. 2025 & 2030.

 

All queen breeders are different in their swcheudles for colours.

For example one queen breeders may follow the calendar and use Green for 2024 and then when it hits Jan 2025 they switch over to blue. The continue to use blue in the next season until janurary again.

Another queen breeder may follow the season. Using Green in the spring/summer of 2024 (August 2024 - Feb 2025) and then use blue for the sping/summer 2025 (August 2025-Feb 2026)

Others also just use one colour for life.

 

It is important to check with your queen breeder what their schedule is so you can understand what the colour on your queen means!