Dark bees

[Potlicker1]

Can anyone explain if a colony of Italians produce a dark, almost black striped bee or is this just an age group of the colony. :?

[mudlakee]

I had very light colored bee's most of the summer and now I am starting to see a lot of dark ones. Tony

[Bill W.]

As they get older, some of the fuzz wears off and they get darker.

You could also have drifting bees from another hive.

You could also have different looking bees if the hive has a new queen.

[TwT]

it is very common for a hive of any kind to have different colored bee's, since most commercial queen rearing has open mating you could have any type that mated with the queen thus throwing different color bee's. about the only one that dont use open mating is AI/II queen producers. some say they have drone saturated area's but they are still open mating and the odds are better to get what they want but no guaranties.

[Brian D. Bray]

Can anyone explain if a colony of Italians produce a dark, almost black striped bee or is this just an age group of the colony. :?

Genetic deversity.  I have what is marketed as Russian queens, the workers range from Golden Italian to almost totally black.  Some are Black with Gray stripes (Caucasian influence?) while others are black with orange stripes.  The color of the worker is determined by the drone the queen mated with.  As a consequence the color variations within a hive can vary greatly, week to week, month to month.  The genetic deversity is good, be grateful for the blessing.

The hairyness or fuzziness of the bee is a better indicator of age, fuzzy bees are newly hatched, bald bees are probably on their last forage mission.
Bees with a widow's peak or blad spot are somewhere in between.