Clipping and Marking Queens

One way to mark the queen is to use a Baldock cage which is pressed into the comb and traps the queen behind a layer of mesh. This is the easiest method but a few pupa may be killed. There is a colour scheme : White for years that end in 1 or 6. Yellow is used when a year ends in 2 or 7. Red if a year ends with a 3 or 8. Green when 4 or 9 is the last digit. Blue if the year ends in a 5 or a 0. Instead of paint a coloured disc may be used. But this is far harder than paint. This article also talks about how to clip the wings of the queen. You need to make sure that she has sperm or she will not lay and so it is best to clip her right after she starts laying. The point of clipping her is so that she doesn't swarm. Some other helpful hints are to wash your hands in alcohol between queen's, use a match stick so the paint can penetrate the hair layer and do not clip a virgin queen because the hive may think her defective and replace her. This seems like a complicated way to prevent a swarm and I would rather use one of the methods that we used in school.