about 10 min ago went down to inspect some of my hives and notice some workers on the ground wrestling with another bee it was a drone. there where 4 sets of bees on the ground 2 workers and 1 drone and they were young drones. by the look of them just hatched drones. so i watched for a lil bit and the workers were dragging them away from the hive. i grabbed one of the drones and looked at it under a magnifier always carry one with me to get closer look, very handy can see things that your normal eye can't see, any way there was a couple very tiny young mites on them. i think it was the bees way of getting rid of the mites :-D these bees are very hygienic. think i will be rearing some queens next year from this hive. has anyone else ever seen this before? Or would this be the workers getting the drones out for the season to save on food supply?
i would guess that the drones are being booted out. mine are already gone. there was another post about this earlier but i don't remember where the original poster was from.
good reminder to make sure hives are queen-right before queens can't be ordered.
Are you going to treat for mites?
thanks kathyp that's what i think too. coming to the end of the season. hope no one has any virgin queens around here or there will be trouble. to answer to Judy in in i let the bees do the treating unless high population comes upon them. what i mean by that is that i have all survival bees which are all feral hive bees from my area and when it comes to the varroa mite they do a good job at it. i just help a little by placing some of my frames in hive with just half of the foundation so that they can draw out drone cone if they please and that's the best natural way to trap the mite and then my bees have very good trait and they will find the capped cell and they will take that infested larva out of the hive. i seen them do it. hopefully ill get some vid of them them doing it next year to back up my notes. and in the spring summer and fall i do a powder sugar test with a home made sticky board under neath the screen bottom board just to do a count all been very impressive so far. i believe that using chemicals to treat them just makes them a stronger mite. just like the mite adapting to chemicals the bees will a doubt to the mite and control them themselves. but it just depends how strong that colony is and how good that laying young queen is.plus good notes!