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drones at entrance

7K views 14 replies 8 participants last post by  Jackam 
#1 ·
I am a very new beekeeper--we installed our first bees in a top bar hive beginning of april. Today I noticed drones coming and going and hanging around the hive. This is the first time I have seen drones.

From what I have read this could be several things (if I am understanding correctly)
1. they could be heading to the drone congregating area
2. getting ready to swarm
3 queen could be making drones only
4. supersede due to ill queen
5. hive could be queenless

More details--they have 12 bars in the hive, 6 have full comb on them and they are working on bar 7 & 8.

I plan to go observe them more tomorrow. I was thinking of opening it up on Monday to add more bars, look for brood/drone comb & investigate further. If you could give me specifics as to what to look for during the next inspection that would be great--I just don't want to overlook anything.

Thanks so much
 
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#2 ·
What you have is very likely normal. However, you won't know until you open them up and inspect. Make sure to check for capped brood, eggs, and larva. If you have this, you have a queen. Also, check for queen cells. If they have queen cells, they are either replacing their queen or are getting ready to swarm. Check for drone brood (it is much larger and the cap bulges out over the worker brood, it is usually in clusters). If you have ALL drone brood, you have a problem. If you have ~30% or less drone brood, sleep easy.

Good luck!
 
#8 ·
Well we just opened it up & saw lots of capped brood, some capped drone brood, but not too much. We then saw a queen cell--which was really exciting/scary. So I think that they are replacing the queen. We didn't see a queen (but I didn't really look too hard). And we didn't see any eggs, but I could be overlooking them I was so shocked by the queen cell--I didn't look too hard after that.

There was a whole in the bottom of the queen cell & I could see a bee in there moving around (the new queen I guess). We put it back in and closed up after that--as we didn't want her to come out --outside of the hive and get lost & I wasn't sure if there was going to be a fight between the old queen and the new.

We did give them more bars so they should have enough space. There was only 1 queen cell. I don't feel like they are looking to swarm as they had plenty of room (I think).

Anyway everytime I open the hive I learn a lot, but realize that I still don't know anything!!! I need a top bar hive beekeeper who makes house calls :)
 
#11 ·
And we didn't see any eggs, but I could be overlooking them I was so shocked by the queen cell--I didn't look too hard after that.
I had trouble seeing eggs too. they are like tiny grains of rice...SUPER tiny!! I did not see them in new comb until I was shiling a flashlight through from behind. They could be just building queen cell for preparedness. I understand that they usually have one or two ready on stand-by, think I read that somewhere in here...

KB
 
#13 ·
If a "queen cell" is open and vacant (mature bees don't count), it's called a queen cup, and most hives have a few here and there, unused. Russian bees tend to have several to many, and take them down and put them back up all the time, but as long as they are not capped or occupied by a larva, you can ignore them. They like to make them on new wax, it's much easier than chewing out old wax with lots of propolis in it.

Drones are normal, and in a new hive a good sign since the bees won't make any unless they are well fed and happy. However, even if they don't make any you will get some as the drones will go to any hive, not just the one they came from, and the bees will almost always let them in.

Things look good! That fresh comb sure is pretty, but I'm quite fond of the old dark stuff I'm collecting -- doesn't break easily and swarms LOVE it.

Peter
 
#14 ·
I am going to try to get better at taking my time and really looking for eggs--we usually have our 3 & 6 year old with us so I "think" I need to hurry/be efficient before the loose interest. That is good to know that queen cups are normal--there was definately someone in our queen cell. We will just have to wait & see what they do--they are such interesting little thing!
 
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