Bee Color Year

Marked Queen Bee Colors For This Year This is the color guide for marking bees. They go by the year the queen was born. For example, queens born in either 2013 or 2018 would be marked with a red dot.

This color guide helps beekeepers ensure they are dealing with the same queen over time by adhering to a standardized color scheme. The color code indicates the year and makes it easier to find the queen during a hive inspection. Queen bees do not live more than five years, and the color changes each year to help identify the age of queens from different distributors.

For 2025, the blue color is the best choice. Years ending in 4 or 9: green It is as simple as that, and it is a perfect way of visual record keeping. And the way it works, is if the Queen hatches during that year, that is the color you mark her with, whether you mark her that year or in the following spring.

The color refers to the year the Queen hatched in. Queen Bee Marking Pens or Markers. Learn how queen bee marking color codes have evolved over the years, from early methods to standardized systems, and discover best practices for accurate marking.

Red color - 3rd year or 8th year; Green color - 4th or 9th year; Blue color - 5th or year 0. For example, if you see a red-marked queen in 2024, that queen was bred in 2023. It is clear that 2028 is not suitable, because this queen would be from the future and 2013 is not suitable either, because bee queens do not live that long.

Queen bee marking follows a standardized color-coding system based on the last digit of the year, designed to help beekeepers track the age of queens efficiently. The colors rotate in a five-year cycle, with each color representing two possible year endings. This system ensures consistency across beekeeping communities and simplifies record.

By marking new born queens with a specific color to each calendar year, beekeepers, wherever they are in the world, can identify the age of the queen bee by the color of her mark. As queen bees very rarely live more than 3-4 years, 5 colors are all that is needed. As you know, especially those of you breeding queens, we tend to mark the newly mated queens with different colours, one for each year in order to recognise their age.

This system has been around for decades because it's uniform, consistent, and lets a beekeeper know the age of the queen while making it easier to spot her in a crowd. The colours and their order through the years are universal. The color guide for marking bees is based on the year the queen was born, with five traditional colors used: white, yellow, red, green, and blue.

This system helps beekeepers ensure they are dealing with the same queen over time by adhering to a standardized color scheme. Queens born in years ending with 1 and 6 use a white posca pen, while years ending with 2 and 7 use a yellow posca pen. Quick tip: It's a good idea to get one color for marking the queen, and another for practicing on other bees beforehand.

Often, beekeepers choose the next year's designated color as all the marked "practice bees" will have died by the time you want to mark next year's queens. Practice your queen-marking skills first!