[Labow]

Hey everyone. Today I went outside in my backyard and noticed that there were maybe 20-30 drones on on the ground in a couple places, some dead, some dying. Havent been out here in a couple of days, but didnt notice them last time i was. They’re being dropped from the sky by other bees. (One just dropped from the sky as i’m writing this)
In the past, if I have a bad varroa infestation I’ll start seeing infected bees on this deck, which healthy bees have taken out of the hive and dropped. But this seems to be 99% drones.
I split my TBH a couple of weeks (2) ago, so I wasn’t sure if maybe these drones had done their duty with a new queen and so they were now dying, but it seems too soon for a new queen to be mating.
I did have a lot of drones in my hive, so maybe that’s all it is. More alive mean more dead in the end.
Wondering if anyone had a guess as to what is going on? (Another just dropped)
Thanks

 

[beemandan]

Your TBH probably isn’t the only bee colony in the area. I’d guess that those are drones that ‘got lucky’.

 

[Labow]

Okay great. Thanks for the response.

 

[canadiyank]

Did you ever figure this out? You can look at pictures of "spent" drones to see if these ones had mated with a queen or not.

 

[Labow]

Re: It’s raining drones

Did you ever figure this out? You can look at pictures of "spent" drones to see if these ones had mated with a queen or not.

well, I'm not sure if it was that they had just mated, or if it was varroa, but a week later that hive had been decimated by varroa and 90% of the bees were dead. I might be making an assumption here....but since varroa like drone cells it would make sense the the drones would be first to be impacted by them, so maybe that's what I was seeing. Or maybe it was that they had just mated, and the timing just happened to coincide, hard to say. I didn't realize that you could tell if they had mated by looking at them, so if this ever happens again I will look.