Celebrating World Bee Day
Did you know that May 20th is World Bee Day?
Each year, we celebrate these fascinating creatures that help sustain global food security as one of our most important pollinators.
In bee keeping, a new queen bee is marked with a different colour each year according to International Queen Bee Marking Colours – a colour code within bee keeping to show the year the queen was introduced and therefore her age. As queen bees only live for 5 years, there are 5 different colours used.
Queen bees are marked so bee keepers can find her easily in the hive and we can determine brood development and condition of the colony. Queen bees are vital to the colony, without them the hive cannot thrive so it’s important to be able to easily identify her also so the bee keeper doesn’t accidently squash her!
This year’s bees will be marked with yellow before being introduced to their colonies but the bee in the below image was introduced last year and was marked with white. Marking doesn’t hurt the bees at all and is usually done with some enamel paint or special paint pen.
For more information get in contact with Jing Zhai
