My 2017 bees are marked yellow. 2016 was white.
Good point. My 2016 queen is white too (but I marked that after checking correct colours)
It should be…
White – years ending 1 or 6.
Yellow – years ending in 2 or 7.
Red – years ending in 3 or 8.
Green – years ending in 4 or 9.
Blue – years ending in 5 or 0.
I should pay attention to what I type…
3 Likes
Haha, Alan, same here, should pay attention. Of course my bees are not marked, just the queens.
I started the last season with one hive. I split the hive and also collected two swarms. I now have four strong hives.
I have seen plenty of fotos of queens but never found a real one in my hives. Maybe queens are a myth 
Africanized queens certainly seem that way. They are hard to spot because they are dark in colouring, and very similar to their daughters. They move very fast (much faster than Europeans) and love to run from the light while you inspect. Meanwhile their daughters are doing their best to distract you by lodging as many stingers as possible in your gloves, arms and face. We gave up trying to find the queen in our accidental africanized nucleus.
The supplier who took the nucleus away found her by shaking all of the bees into a box with a queen excluder on top. Apparently he uses a 2 man system. One guy shakes the frame, the other has a smoker in one hand and a spray bottle of 1:1 syrup in the other. As the bees are shaken off, they get simultaneously sprayed and smoked down through the excluder. The queen and drones are left on top of the excluder - much easier to find the mythical creature! 