>Heck I mark hives with the queens origin,  but I promise some of those lids get swapped on occasion, and many queens get replaced we don’t know about.

Our Stud Book (Excel spread sheet containing thousands of records) has now been running for 10 years.
I have to say that it is very difficult and time-consuming to maintain really accurate records.
Forget writing on hive roofs.
Each hive body must be numbered and each queen must be allocated a number (if you clip and mark queens then there is no need to put a queen's number on her physically as you will know when she is replaced).  That way you can know the origin, mother, grandmother etc of every queen - and you know which hive she is in.  You can know when she was born, when replaced, the quality of her offspring, their temper and the crop that they produce.
But I doubt this is possible for more than a couple of hundred hives unless you have some serious secretarial assistance.

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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