>
> EVERYBODY should have MARKED queens, so they really KNOW (rather than
> guessing)
> what is going on in their colonies.

We  have part of our queens marked the last two  years. But what we noticed
in the first year was, that at the end of the summer a remarkable higher %
of
the colonies of the marked  queens we had to kill, because of a bad
performing queen. Last year we noticed early supersedure of the marked
queens (within 4 weeks). Of course we don't know about the unmarked ones.
Does the extra handling of marking the queen influence somewhere ?
We requeen every other year and swarming has not been any problem here in
Canada compared to what we were used to with our "Dutch black bees" when we
lived in the Netherlands. We have Carneolan types from Kona and the Huxter
mixtures from southern B.C .Last year we had no more queens and some big
colonies left, so we made 11 walk away splits. They were as gentle as can
be and all wintered well as we found out today.

 > A MARKED queen is SO MUCH EASIER TO SEE than an unmarked queen,
particularly

But it makes you lazy too, if she is superseeded you have to go through your
hive for a second time....

> I know of no reason NOT to mark a queen,
I mention some above.

Kindly regards,
Maria van den Berg, partner in +800 hives, Peace River Area,almost
60ºNB,Canada