The first year of beekeeping made for a lot of memories. The first time one of the hives began kicking out drones, I was at work. I got a frantic phone call from home. My wife had observed many white immature bees on the front of the bottom board laying there dead. Like so many times before during that first summer the call started out something like, “Somethings wrong with the bees.”
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- This is hive 1001. It is the only hive of my original 4 that still remain. They requeened themselves last fall and had a great year this year. They look the best they ever have.
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- This picture shows some drones that were pulled from the cells before they were fully mature.
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- I don’t know how many are here, but it’s a bunch.
I had read about the drone exile every fall, but had not anticipated seeing it. Now this is something I look for routinely every year. I have been waiting around for ejection day for the hives here at the house, but I have not observed it. The nights have been dipping down ever closer to freezing so the yearly carnage must be close at hand. Perhaps it happened and I missed it. Now that I have chickens they may have cleaned up all of the evidence in front of the hives.
While visiting another hive site last week I found what I was looking for outside 1001. There were at least a hundred drones maybe more in various stages of development all right outside the front of the hive. This means that mouse guards must go on soon. There will be more on that later in the week.
Winter is coming, better be getting your hives prepared.
