Are bees that are bearding, heavily, nurse bees in excess, field bees being held as back up bees or are they a combination of the 2.
Jim
I'm glad you asked that question. I have a couple of hives that are bearding heavily [both packages this spring with Russian queens]. I keep telling them to stop hanging out and get their bee butts in gear pulling more comb. They ignore me.
My observevation is that they are mostly forigers with few nurse bees and drones. The nurse bees control the numbers in the hive.
John
The reason I am asking is that my largest hive now has a very large beard. *f they arenurse bees, I could take them and place them in a small hive with some eggs and make a new hive from them. The thing is that they would have to bee nurse bees for this to work.
I have recently read that some one determined that bees actually have a large number of field bees that do not fly and are like a ready reserve in case something happens to the field bees.
Jim
If you open the hive on a hot day (probably not the best idea) the brood combs will have very few bees on them. I'd guess a lot of those bearding bees are nurse bees, but I never set out to prove it one way or the other.
Quote from: Michael Bush on July 16, 2015, 01:11:57 PM
If you open the hive on a hot day (probably not the best idea) the brood combs will have very few bees on them. I'd guess a lot of those bearding bees are nurse bees, but I never set out to prove it one way or the other.
OK, Thanks Mike.