I have imaged the Beehive Cluster nearly exactly three years before using the APO and a color camera. From 23 subs with 180 seconds exposure time each (1.15h total) I got this result:
The different colors have several causes.
First of all the filters in the color camera have a different transmission profile than the filters used with the monochrome camera.
The new image not only has much more integration time, the telescope used was two stops faster. Converting to the APO this would equal about 20 hours exposure time which also reveals much fainter stars in the background.
When imaging the new version, the sky wasn't exactly clear, resulting in halos around the brighter stars.
But the most significant difference is probably the new workflow, which includes a photometric color calibration, not available back in 2022.
Using my current workflow with photometric color correction, these old data come out like this: