[kilnrat]

I installed my pkgs of Italian bees in two 8 frame hives Saturday. Everything seems to be going o'k. However, I have a question about the size of drones. I "assumed" drones were the large bees coming into the hive -- they appear to be over twice the size of the female workers. They fly up to the hive and go in without any resistance --- so I assume they are the male drones and not some other variety of bee robbing the hive. Their noise is quite a bit louder than the worker bees (due to size?) ... you definitely cannot miss their arrivals. Just wanted someone with more experience to give me peace of mind that I am not missing something. Thanks.

 

[AmericasBeekeeper]

sounds about right, too bad you received a couple pounds of consumers not workers, a good supplier would shake them through a queen excluder so you just get workers

 

[tnmx]

Since the drones do not have stingers you can pick them up to make sure.LOL
They are also good to practice on for queen marking. If you do mark the dont release them or you will never find your queen if you use the same color paint.

 

[Duboisi]

Or he could mark the drones in all other colors than blue, and let the queen keep her nice blue 2010 dot.

 

[Ruben]

Yea they come in like helicopters. One sure fire way to find out if it is a drone is to grab it and play with it. If it knocks the dog snott out of you then it was not a drone. LOL Just kidding by the way