[beeman7467]

I dug into one of my hives earlier today and found what seems to be a lot of drones and drone brood. Workers are present in large numbers, but I don't think I've ever seen whole frames of drone brood like I saw today. There are also whole frames of worker brood. Colony has a queen (I saw her early on in the inspection). Any ideas? Is this normal? We are just starting our spring bloom.

Thanks for any help.

 

[AmericasBeekeeper]

It is normal, but I could live without all the extra mouths to feed. I would never mate a queen in Hillsborough County Florida so close to the ports because of the Africanized. You could pull them out and freeze the frame to destroy any Varroa that are atracted to drone brood. If they all hatch your Varroa population could jump.

 

[Bradley_Bee]

but if there is no varroa and they are not africanized this is a good thing.

 

[Naturegoods]

If you cull out the drone brood frames you'll cut future use of it by the queen. Given that size cell - you get drones. Not always a bad thing though, maybe preparation for new queen rearing aka swarming.