a Mr Borst snip... 

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. 


my questions and comments...
it would be good to know what kind of paint does or does not work.  I have personally witnessed some painted queens here have their marks removed quite quickly and really suspected the paint might be the problem.  any suggestion on a better product would be appreciated.

beyond marking what other BMP do people use.  I know that in highly africanized places that clipping wings for new queens is listed as a BMP (I don't do this myself).  I see at there is at least one mention of frequency of inspection and it would be useful to see what other's think is an optimal inspection routing?  

I have long thought that PURPOSE is the driving force behind how individual people do things.  Although this gig started out with a pretty simple format in terms of what I wanted to accomplish over a short time purpose is now stacking on purpose and this certainly makes decision making more difficult.

As something of a correction to Mr Borst above snip.... there really is no law of diminishing returns since this is a gross simplification (and really who is there to enforce such a  law?) but is more correctly tagged as the Rule of Fixed Proportions < quite likely there is exception to this rule but especially in economics and finance this rule is quite robust). 

Going back to Jay Smith sage advice (and a mantra I repeat myself) there are a lot of problems in beekeeping remedied by simply keeping young queens in a hive.

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