[cphilip]

About 6pm but in full Sun I was watching the landing board. And two total different looking bee's came in and entered the Hive. Looked all the world accepted and no real effort to dissuade them was made by the others. They were slightly larger bees but were Almost completely Caramel in color. No Black banding at all like my main bees. Although these bees I have seem to fade to a lighter color further up the abdomen they have at least four good black bands. These two did not. I watched a while longer and saw no others like them come in. And many were coming and going. And activity appears normal otherwise.

Do I have recruits? Or maybe some evil Spawn? Maybe a different variety impregnation of the queen and throwing a few oddballs?

 

[iddee]

#1...Drones drift between colonies at will. If they were drones, they will not be challenged.

#2...Your queen mated with 12 to 20 drones. They could be from any of them if they were worker bees.

#3...There is always a chance of a throwback from 2 or more generations.

#4...Could be just a case of drifting

#5...could be a case of partial albinoism. I think it is called mellinistic, or something like that.

 

[Ben Brewcat]

Hey cphilip, check out this pic of my entrance last season. I asked the same thing. The circled bees are the most graphic but others make the point too:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a60/Brewcat/differentbees.jpg

Similar deal I think. The queen mates with a bunch of fellas and you'll get varied genetics in the population; I'm proud of my mutts!

 

[cphilip]

Brewcat, the one circled bottom one looks like my normal bees. The others you circled are not like the ones I saw. But I get the point.

These bees I have are dark black for three or four stripes then the last stripe or so to the front fades to Yellowish. And the bodies are fairly yellow. So its not suprising to me they are Hybrids of some sort of typical Italian with perhaps some past of something mixed in.

Tomorrow I am going to try and capture a picture of them for you. Wish I had had my camera with me today. But I will tomorrow!

Thanks fellas. Interesting.

 

[King bee apiary]

The darker ones look to be old bees that have lost their hair.The others are not as old so they still have plenty of hair.
Since you said they were larger could they be queens returning from mating?

 

[cphilip]

Were not that much larger actually. Certainly not much longer. Fatter by a tad. But not huge and certainly not pointy long abdomens. They may have been perhaps 5 or so percent larger overall but still proportionaly the same. Not oddly longer one way or another.

And I was using his picture just for comparison of the darness and pattern of the banding of my "normal" bees.

They were however "fuzzy". But then again so are some of the normal bees. These may have been a tad fuzzier than most.

But imagine a completey lemony tanish bee with what little banding so faint its hardly noticable. Almost completely Tan. I did see a moment of communication between one normal bee and one of these. But he then went about his business. Just checking in it seemed.

I would not say they seem the shape of pictures of queens. However it would actually be nice if they were. I would do a split. I need something for this little garden hive. I guess I need to catch a picture for you guys to help me be sure.

[ June 17, 2006, 10:32 PM: Message edited by: cphilip ]