We investigate the resonant quantum motion of spin-1 particles in a magnetic guide. A symmetry analysis is undertaken in order to reveal the complex symmetry properties of the system which lead to a twofold degeneracy in the energy-level spectrum. Lifetimes and energies of the resonance states are computed by employing the complex scaling method. By analyzing several hundreds of resonances we are able to make conclusions about the global properties of the resonance spectrum. The effect of an Ioffe field which is applied parallel to the guide is also discussed. We observe a global increase of the lifetimes with increasing Ioffe-field strength. For certain parameter regimes we find the ground-state resonance to exhibit a longer lifetime than the energetically neighbored excited states. The latter could have interesting implications on the time evolution of trapped ultracold atomic ensembles. Applications of our results to calculate the resonance energies andlifetimes of the trapped alkali-metal atoms and are outlined.