Changes

* When new queens hatch in the incubator, they can easily be marked or tagged.

New queens can be produced either spontaneously in swarming colonies or in a controlled environment in queen rearing operations. New bee colonies get their queen in one of these ways. Because the queen mates freely in the air several kilometres away from its origin, it is possible for the queen to pair with other subspecies besides ''A. m. mellifera''. This kind of [[cross-breeding]] is destructive for conservation activities, which is why queen producers are looking for isolated areas where only ''A. m. mellifera'' colonies, queens, and drones exist in the flight area. This can be arranged either in island environments or on the mainland without any other bees around in a ten-kilometer radius from the mating station.