Bees removing capped live drone brood - Why?

[Paul McCarty]

The bees in one of my mating nucs are removing drone brood that is still alive, and tossing it out the entrance. Why would they do this? Some of it looked like it was within a day of hatching.

[geebob]

Maybe resource management? Are they short of food, space, nurse bees? Could also be response to a cold spell. I had a number of drones dumped from one of my hives last week as well.

[BPApiaries]

I thought that was also a sign of hygienic behavior - did the drones appear to have anything wrong with them?

[the kid]

mites ????

[tsmullins]

My uncle and I recently noticed something similar. We had a very warm late winter. Then we had an extended cold snap.

[Bsweet]

1. Hygienic bees will remove brood infected with mites
2. Drone brood is often on the outer edge of the brood nest and may get chilled in a cold snap if there are not enough bees to cover all of the brood, and they get tossed out.

[Paul McCarty]

I thought chilled brood too, but these drones were kicking and struggling to move. Most did not have wings developed yet, and whitish spots where they were still basically larva. Chilled brood is basically dead, these were not. This nuc of bees has a full division board feeder so food is no issue. They are, however, raising several virgin queens in their midst who are hatching out as I type this. My guess is a combination of hygienic behavior and making room for the new queen to lay.

[the doc]

this happened to me last weekened. i added a frame of emerging/capped brood with some capped drones on the end to a nuc about 2 weeks ago. They pulled all the drone brood out and dumped them in front of the hive. they were alive and within a few days of hatching

[Paul McCarty]

That's EXACTLY what I did!