It's not surprising to me that most swarms will not have a marked queen. When you consider most queen producers charge extra for marking, most package bees include unmarked queens, superceedure queens, swarms with virgin queens, the difficulty most novice beekeepers have finding the queen let alone marking her, I'd be willing to bet there are far fewer marked queens in hobbyists hives that you would think. But again, this is drifting into the realm of speculation of how many are actually marked and if lack of finding markings means anything. Also, even if you know the swarm originated from a feral hive, where did that hive originate? How many years/generations must the bees be free from beekeepers management before they can truly be considered feral? -Tim *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm