Drones 2025
Drones 2025
I received a text from a beekeeper in Greensboro this afternoon. I'll be looking in on her bees in late February when she has to be away for a period of time. She was checking sugar bricks in her shims today and saw a drone walking around on a brick. I don't know if it is one that has overwintered or if her hive is producing drones this early. I checked one of the nucs I have overwintered, and although I did not see drones or drone brood, it was stronger than I thought it would be and had more capped brood and eggs than I would have expected. The extended forecast for February has been trending warmer and warmer since I first started watching it in early December. If next week stays relatively warm and dry, I'm going to try and get into more hives to see just how far late winter brood build up has gotten.
Re: Drones 2025
I had a chance to do a relatively quick check of all my colonies yesterday. Mine are all in a deep and a medium, but I did not break open the boxes and inspect the lower deep (yet). I only pulled frames from the top to check on their food stores and movement up.
Three welcomed observations: all colonies are alive/healthy, all are still heavy with 6-7+ full medium frames of honey, and only 1 out of 25 has decided to build a bunch of comb in the upper shim!
I did not notice a single drone. And although I did see the queens in many of the hives, the only brood I observed in the top medium were some patches of eggs (no larvae or capped brood).
My next inspection will definitely include a look in the lower deep to get a handle on brood production, any need for box reversals, etc.
Three welcomed observations: all colonies are alive/healthy, all are still heavy with 6-7+ full medium frames of honey, and only 1 out of 25 has decided to build a bunch of comb in the upper shim!
I did not notice a single drone. And although I did see the queens in many of the hives, the only brood I observed in the top medium were some patches of eggs (no larvae or capped brood).
My next inspection will definitely include a look in the lower deep to get a handle on brood production, any need for box reversals, etc.
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Re: Drones 2025
Next week will have some warm days and I will look into my hives as well. If I find my two hives are strong, as I suspect, how early can I do splits on them? Do I want to wait until I see drones? The Accuweather 45 day forecast shows night lows for February in the 40s with some nights in mid to low 30s.
Re: Drones 2025
I prefer to see drones flying before I attempt to make a split if I am trying to have a hive make a new queen. Some say if you see drone pupae in the purple eyed stage you can graft/expect to get queens mated because you will have mature drones by the time queens are ready for mating flights. I find this a bit risky for my taste.
Re: Drones 2025
Agree with Jacobs. If you're talking about doing walk-away splits, it's best to wait a bit. I experimented last season with several early splits to try and head off swarming, and was 100% UNsuccessful. At the time, I felt there were plenty of drones, but maybe they weren't yet mature enough to be out mating.
Re: Drones 2025
I went through all of my hives at home yesterday afternoon and will get to my away hives today. I did not see any drones and only 2 capped drone cells in a nuc. I did see a very few drone sized cells with either eggs of very young larvae in them. The hives looked healthy with some brood build up underway.
Re: Drones 2025
I went through all of my away from home hives yesterday. All looked to be in reasonably good shape. I did not see any drones or any capped drone brood, but several had surprisingly large populations. I don't expect a February start to swarm season, but reasonably normal February weather, the appearance of drone brood, and blooming of the red maple may mean early March rather than mid-March swarm season start. We'll see.