BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > DOWN UNDER BEEKEEPING

I?m in trouble again

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Guitarman:
It?s past midnight here, I?ve just gotten home from work, but I went out and took some pictures in the dark, I hope these help.

The15thMember:
Those are definitely drones.  So if your weather has taken a colder turn recently, I'd assume it's just that.

BeeMaster2:
Being that they are drones being pulled out going into winter is a good thing. They are conserving their food supply when the drones are no longer needed for mating.
One of our new club members kept feeding his bees straight through his first winter and he had lots of drones all the way into spring. We had told him to expect to see drones being kicked out in the fall and couldn?t understand why he still had them. We told him it was the constant feeding. By the way, we had very mild weather that year.
Jim Altmiller

Guitarman:
Well it?s been three months since I last posted. In the last couple of weeks I?ve had so many drones. Not only flying around the hive in big numbers but there?s big numbers on the ground crawling everywhere and dying. I did some googling and drones at this time of year is normal as it?s warming time very soon if not now. It?s the first time I?ve ever seen all these drones everywhere but I didn?t panic because what I read said it was normal and it doesn?t mean your hive is going  to  swarm or anything like that. Okay so what I?m saying here is I have heaps of drones.

Okay the next point I want to make is I was at my back window and I could hear the roar of the bees. And I thought are they swarming. I ran outside and it was a warm day in middle of the day. And the bees were crazy active and you could hear the roar in the front of the hive. I got up without a few metres and I watched them to see if they were swarming or what was going on. Not that I would have any idea what to look for. But what I did notice was none of the bees  coming in had any pollen on them. I watched about five minutes and I didn?t see one bee With any pollen. And being very experienced 😂 owning one hive and being a Newby. I wondered are these bees robbing the hive. I did some more googling and it appears it?s highly likely they were. 
They were busy again today but not as noisy as yesterday and I watched for about five minutes again and saw two bees coming with pollen on them. So I decided I need to put some mesh in the front and make that opening  much smaller. At the moment it?s a full width  opening. I came up with a great idea of doing it at night. When the bees are all asleep. It should be easy to go out there and just put some mesh in that opening. So it?s almost midnight and I go out. Mesh in hand. There?s about 15 to 20 bees sitting on the ledge or out the front. I?m thinking this is gonna be easy. I?ll just slide the mesh in. Well before I could even get the mesh to the opening, a surge bees started coming out. It was like they?ve been called the war. They could smell me. And I just had a shower too. They smelt me and they were coming out in huge numbers. So I backed away a little and they quickly calm down and went back in. So in my stupidity, I thought I?ll push the mesh in now really quick while there?s hardly any bees there. I never got the mesh in. They attacked me like crazy in the dark. I was lucky only got one sting in my shoulder.

When I got near the entrance before they went crazy, I was amazed at the noise coming from inside the box. You could hear all those bees in there flapping their wings. I had been quite concerned with the robber bees earlier that my hive was dead or had no queen.

So I learnt one thing tonight. If you think you can go to your hives  in the dark and do any work you?re kidding yourself.

My question to those experienced just a little bit more than me😂 is this. Could all the drones mean anything. Am I wrong thinking because there was no pollen on any bees that they were robber bees.

I?m thinking  suiting up tomorrow  to go and have a look inside for the first time in six months. Have no idea what I?m looking for and if I find queen cells, is this a good time for me to separate my frames that are all stuck together. Because if I accidentally kill the Queen, It won?t be a problem.

Terri Yaki:
Do you know what orientation flights look like? It could have been orientation for new fliers.

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