On the topic of marking queens, several have made comments about the paint being "bad for the queen." Painting bees has been a practice for quite some time. I suppose the acrylics may be less problematic that the oil based paint, but I think old fashioned model airplane paint last the longest. 

Tom Glenn used to sell his breeders with a numbered disk glued to the back, without apparent harm to the queen. On the other hand, many beekeepers practice annual requeening and have no need to mark, nor track how old they are. The idea being, any new queen of good stock is better than any other queen.

A lot depends on one's goal. If high production is the goal, then there are a lot of management actions that one can implement to raise the efficiency. Up to a point, of course. There is always the law of diminishing return. Conversely, some people keep bees for fun and like to try to keep track of the queens, and get several years out of them. 

In terms of BMPs, I think the main things to focus on are the health of the colonies, and relationships with other people. By that I mean, keeping bees responsibly; cooperating with the ag community; and not endangering the public.

PLB

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