It looks like the bees are coming in the wee hours of April 17th. This is a good thing because that is early Saturday. I won’t miss any work. I will install the bees Sunday morning at dawn.
If you are near West Nyack, want to help, and you own a bee veil and gloves, let me know you are coming.
I fully expect one more delay. Don’t make plans just yet. I have to look up when they came last year, but it may have been later.
There has been much rain. This is good for the flowers, but the bees don’t go out in the rain that much. The temps have been above 50 so the girls are roaming when it is sunny. They are bringing back tons of pollen. I see forsythia and trees starting to bloom. If we have any sun it will be a good spring.
How do you know they are girls? I thought the drones do all the work, and that they were male…….
The workers are girls. The drones do nothing but mate with the queen. Normally there aren’t many drones. The package is about 10,000 worker bees and a queen. All of them are female.
Keith
if the pack contains only girls where do the drones come from
It contains some drones, but mostly girls. Drones are raised just like workers, but there is buildup of drones when the queen the hive senses that there will be a swarm and a new queen will need to be mated. In the summer there are lots of drones around, but they are driven out in the fall because the hive won’t need them until spring, and they don’t need to feed the drones that they won’t need.
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