Hi all,
I finally found my new homemade queen on the weekend. Was very excited to see her and see lots of solid brood pattern and next to no drones either.
I tried to mark her using one of those disc type holders but I was so worried about messing her up that I didn’t get a very good mark.
Thoughts on this? Am I best to just leave her alone now?
And I have a sneaky 2nd question regarding “practice cups” (my 2nd hive that was the swarm of the other one). Do you prefer to remove or leave them? I don’t have more pictures of this one as it was getting very windy so I wanted to be quick, but there was a lot of Drone cells in it. Is that normal for this time of year still? Blue mountains west of Sydney NSW is my location
Cheers
Craig
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Hi Craig, I would leave the queen as she is. I have never marked a queen in 36 years. Sometimes they’re hard to spot, other times you spot them on a frame before you lift it out. It doesn’t hurt to practice spotting an unmarked queen, however I only look for them when I have to. The brood tells me she’s there, & how well she’s performing.
Another thing to point out from past experience is that young queens can be vulnerable to getting balled & killed during an inspection. For that reason I keep inspections of colonies with young queens as brief as possible.
I leave practice cups alone, bees will only build them again. Also expect colonies to produce drones right up until autumn.
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As always, your quick response and thorough replies are very helpful and greatly appreciated Jeff, thank you
Cheers
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That queen mark looks fine to me. You haven’t obscured her eyes, nor blocked all of her spiracles. She should do fine. You may find it helpful to practice on drones before you have any future attempts. They are very expendable if it goes horribly wrong!
I agree with @JeffH on his comments too. 
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Well done spotting her before marking her and I agree with Dawn, your first go at marking a queen is successful.
Normally, I’d agree with Jeff that queen spotting is not that important. That seeing the signs of her presence (eggs and young larvae) is good enough. But in our new era of varroa, things are different. For obvious reasons, you really need to know your queen is not in the 300 bee sample used to monitor your mite levels. I was helping an older beekeeper yesterday checking mite levels and he didn’t spot the queen on the frame from which he was about to collect the wash sample. She was quite small. A young queen after a swarm, but laying quite well.
Now you’ve marked yours, make a point of finding her whenever you’re in the hive. That practice could save her life one day. For more practice, I recommend getting a copy of Hilary Kearney’s book, Queen Spotting. The dozens of photos of frames with queens vary in difficulty from obvious to head scratchingly difficult. It will definitely improve your skills.
Mike
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Thanks Mike
I hadn’t considered the sampling angle, that’s sound advice, thank you
Cheers
Ah I forgot about using drones ha! I was so excited to finally see her that all other rationale went out the window! Glad she looks okay and I’ll make use of all those drones in the other one when they hatch. Thanks Dawn
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You’re welcome Craig 
Cheers
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The advantages of practicing with drones is that they are docile, stingless and cannot escape a queen clip, cage or catcher, unlike workers. They are also expendable, and numerous in spring. They are a good resource to develop skills without hurting the colony.
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Just use a different colour marker to what you will use for your queen. We run practise sessions inthe training apiary and it can get a little wild in some hives with 20-30 marked drones on the frames…
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Excellent point! Yes, I usually pick a funky colour, like purple, gold or silver. It can be fun to be a kid again!
Yeah I was planning on getting one that’s not used for the years- it’ll be fun to practice, I’ll share a pic of my efforts once I’ve “painted the town” 
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The bad part of my brain still wants to mark random bees I find in my garden (which is not the location of my hives) just to mess with other beekeepers…
I just want to hear one of them say “I suddenly have multiple pink marked workers in my hive” at one of our local meetups.
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