A beekeeper shows how to mark a newly mated queen with a white pen instead of paint. He demonstrates the precise technique: pump the pen, wipe the nib, apply one dot from behind, then let her walk onto your hand before returning her to the hive.
She looks really nice. The weather's been good. There's eggs everywhere. We're going to plan B. I'm not gonna kill that queen. I'm not gonna reintroduce anything. I think we are back on track. Right, Zane, you see how quick this queen is here? Yes. Very quick, yeah. So she is just freshly mated. She won't have been around long. I wanna mark her though. So I've got the white pen here. So don't do what everyone does, which is get your pen, take it out, and go and plonk it on the queen and stick loads of paint all over her. That is not what we wanna do here. You do a few pumps there like that, and then you wipe the nib. Do this anywhere. I just want to get all that excess paint off. And then, you know my way, Zane. I just come in from behind like that, a single dot, and she is deciding to walk up my hand. What's she doing that for? Chuck her back on there. There we go, one marked queen. Quick as that. But she's very much accepted. That is the colony's queen, and we're going to get her back inside now. Yeah. Okay. Good.
