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If you detect a reeking, putrefying, gagging odor near your beehives this time of year, it could be the aroma of dead drones. Phillip at Mudsongs.org and I both detected it yesterday, and we both went through moments of self-doubt when we wondered what was happening to our hives. Having forgotten the lessons of [...] When food sources run low, such as during a summer nectar dearth, the workers in a honey bee hive will often expel both drones and drone pupae. Since drones eat plenty of food but don’t collect any, it is a way for the colony to conserve stores for the winter. Later on, in the [...] The temperature dropped to 46 degrees F last night. Alder leaves are falling by the bushel. It rained all last week. I wore a sweater all day yesterday. Instead of brown and crispy, my lawn is still green. What is going on? Summer never really started here in the Puget Sound area and I’ve [...] Ever wonder why you sometimes see black bees and yellow bees in the same hive? The answer is simple genetics. Since a queen may mate with many different drones (as many as 20), the progeny of that queen may look strikingly different from one another. Italian drones, for example, have a good chance of [...] The easiest method of raising a new queen is to move a ripe queen cell from a busy colony into a nuc or mating box stocked with nurse bees and brood. This is usually the first type of queen rearing a new beekeeper tries and it is both fun and effective. Plus it gives [...] Several beekeepers with foundationless frames have reported finding large number of drone cells in their hives. In some cases, the new brood is 25% to 50% drones. While colonies on foundationless frames always have more drones than those on preformed foundation, the number of drones can seem out of hand. And indeed, vast amounts [...] I finally saw my first drone on Wednesday April 20. He made his appearance on the landing board of my busiest hive–just one day shy of a month later than last year. Although I went through the rest of my hives, he was the only fully-formed male I could find. I did, however, find [...] In contrast to a swarm-control split where you need to know the whereabouts of your queen, a walkaway split can be made without having to find the queen. The steps for setting up a walkaway split are easy: Examine the brood nest of the hive you want to split and look for eggs. Split [...] Other than its blocky shape, the most distinguishing feature of a honey bee drone is its eyes. They are huge, cover a large portion of its head, and nearly meet in the middle. Why so big? The single function of a honey bee drone is to mate with a young queen. The large, well-developed [...] Here in the north, late August is not a good time for drones. Although it is still summer, you know fall is coming when the drones get ousted from their hives. Drone eviction is a vital part of the colony life cycle. Yesterday when I walked past my hives I noticed a large number [...] |
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