Purple eyed larvae 2/17/13

[specialkayme]

Due largely to the unseasonable snow we received yesterday, I noticed this morning that most of the maple blossoms had fallen off the trees around me. Not all, but most. So I figured it would be a good time to throw on another pollen patty. When I cracked the two brood boxes apart, I noticed two drone larvae that were exposed. One was undeveloped, and another was in the purple eye stage.

They say the purple eye drone larvae stage is the earliest you can graft. I'm probably going to give it another week or two, but good to know.

I didn't see any actual drones though. But since temps were below 40 when I was feeding, I wasn't really looking. Had to open up, slap the patty, then close asap.

[Jacobs]

Your report lines up with the capped drone brood I saw at the Ag Center, and a few drones flying at my hives at home last Friday. Are you going to be making splits or are you going to be grafting larvae and raising some queens?

[specialkayme]

Grafting. Dr. Tarpy taught me to avoid walk away splits, when at all possible. I may make up a few nucs from the mated queens, I don't know yet. But I like to have twice as many queens on hand as I need. I can always find a good home for a queen, but it can often be hard to find a queen when you need one.

My only concern now is getting the swarm box together to make the cell starter. With the flux in temps we've been seeing, it makes me nervous to pull a few pounds of bees out of a few hives, in the event we get a cold night and they need the resources. That's the only reason why I'll be waiting another week or two.

[Wally]

Use the cloake board method and eliminate that problem.

I have a nice one SKI made for me if you want to borrow it.

[specialkayme]

I may take you up on the offer later in the season, if it still stands Wally.

I generally don't like to experiment with the first batch of queens. I generally find it's better to experiment with queen rearing methods after I have my first set ready.

I saw a drone that was evicted last night, dead on the landing board. I assume the ladies either threw him out of the hive, or more likely he got cold on his way back in. But either way, it's mature drones, which is good. I was contemplating grafting this Sunday. Might wait till next weekend though. Not sure just yet.

[honeyb]

What is the purple eye stage?

[Jacobs]

I haven't looked up at what day in the 24 days of drone development the larva reaches the purple eyed stage. For beekeepers in late winter and early spring, it is an indicator that the new "crop" of drones will soon be emerging. If a beekeeper wants to raise queens or needs to have a hive make a new queen, mature drones must bee flying for a queen to be properly mated.

honeyb, if you want to see how the timing works, go to our "Just Stuff" section of this board and open up the "useful links" post. Open the queen rearing calendar link and play with it by putting in dates. The general thinking is that when we see significant numbers of purple eyed drones in our hives, if we want to graft larvae to make new queens, the timing will be right to have mature drones flying when new queens are ready to go on their mating flights.

Later in the spring when large numbers of mature drones are flying, this early signal is less important to beekeepers.