Tom,
I am a  little surprised at hearing this discouragement about marking queens
from YOU!

EVERYBODY should have MARKED queens, so they really KNOW (rather than
guessing)
what is going on in their colonies.  For example, many eminent bee
researchers and bee scientists have written that up to 60% of all queens are
superseded before
they are a year old under some conditions.  If your queen is not marked, is
the queen that you see on September 1st or July 4th the same queen that you
saw on April 10th?

Accepting all that is written that Carniolans are the most gentle of all bee
races, if your newly purchased Carnie queen is not marked, and your bees get
nasty in July,
maybe your Carnie queen swarmed or was superseded and her daughter bred with
nasty drones thereby producing nasty workers.

In the past 20 years, research has well proven that "the younger the queen,
the less
swarming you will have" because the ability of a queen to produce the queen
pheromone that inhibits swarming diminishes each day of her life beginning
from the day of her breeding.  Hence, many beekeepers have changed their
management
style to requeening EVERY year, and some of the large commercial migratory
beekeepers requeen twice each year to maintain their populations as well as to
inhibit swarming.

Speaking for myself, I switched from Italians to Carniolans 52 years ago to
take advantage of their EXPLOSIVE early spring population growth, and was
FORCED to
learn ALL ABOUT SWARMING for which the Carnie is well known.  Long ago, I
learned
to requeen every year was a GREAT help in swarm prevention.

A MARKED queen is SO MUCH EASIER TO SEE than an unmarked queen, particularly
in
your black bees like Carniolans or Caucasians.

I know of no reason NOT to mark a queen, and several good reasons for marking
a queen.

By the way, when I see an unmarked queen in one of my 100+ colonies, I than
know that those bees are no longer 100% Carniolan, so I then mark that queen
SILVER (GREY) so I don't use that colonies production figures in my honey
production records, plus I use that queen in one of my Observation hives for
the county fair
in August.

Keep your queens MARKED, Tom!

I hope I have helped.

George