At 10:29 PM 7/8/97 EDT, you wrote:
>According to [log in to unmask]:
>>
>> i give each one of my bees a name. this helps keep track of them. lately i
>> have been running out of names we all have problems Jerry the beekeeper
>>
According to Frederick L. Hollen
>I only name the queens.  Keeps things simpler. In case of a
>supercedure or swarm the new queen gets the same name, with a
>Roman numeral after it (II, III, IV)  as with human royalty. If you
>really want to name them all, you could thus recycle the names
>about every 6 weeks.  Hope this helps.
 
I started by naming hives alphabetically from Athens and Budapest down to
Xanadu, Yokohama and Zanzibar.  Edinburgh's claim to fame was as the most
aggressive hive I ever encountered - I had to divide the hive 3 successive
times to get the population down far enough to locate the queen - gave me
great satisfaction to squash that one.
Quarrelsome lot, the Scots.
 
So as not to be accused of racist remarks (and I ran out of names) these
days I number boxes and list queens according to breeding line and year e.g.
W1* is the breeder queen, all her daughter queens bred this year are W1/97
and a daughter selected as a breeder is W1-1*.  The initial letter indicates
the first origin of the line.  The Roman numerals is a good idea.
 
Betty McAdam
 
HOG BAY APIARY
Penneshaw, Kangaroo Island
j.h. & e. mcadam<[log in to unmask]
http://kigateway.eastend.com.au/hogbay/hogbay1.htm