Too Early for drones or Queen failing ???

[Adam james]

Hello Everyone , i have a Ob hive in my lounge and this will be its second season with a colony in it. It has pulled throe the winter extremely well and the bees still have allot of stores. The queen laid threw a few weeks in December then shut down again till the end of January. She started a small brood patch off on each side of a brood frame and maintained this until last week. She has now started increasing this area and the past few days the weather has been warm and workers have been streaming in with legs full of pollen. I am slightly concerned because i have noticed a drone present in the colony. It isn't overly big and more worker size. Its the only one i can see and was wondering if my queen was poorly mated. The brood capping so far looks flat , but there are some raised around the edges. She is a fresh queen from last year and was added to the colony in august when a supersede attempt failed.

Any ideas  :? thankyou

Adam

[Kathyp]

knowing where you are would help answer the question.  if you were in alaska if might be early for drones.  if you are in florida, maybe not......

[Adam james]

Hello Kathy so sorry i didn't think to add location , I'm in the UK , England ,

Adam

[Kathyp]

you can put that in your profile.  you might consider narrowing that down a bit for your fellow UKers.  it  will help them help you.

in general, i would not worry about one early drone.  if the laying pattern is good and everything else looks good, i'd just wait and see.  i you see more and/or the pattern does not look good, that would be the time to worry.

oops, see you already put it there.  sorry.

[Adam james]

Thankyou Kathy , yes lol added my location after you said lol thought i had done it already. Many thanks , ill keep watching then.

[specialkayme]

One drone is fine. A hive full of drones is a problem.

[D Coates]

I'm with KathyP and SpecialKayme.  Don't worry until you see a bunch of raised cappings, especially if they are mixed within a bunch of worker cappings.

On a similar note, can you imaging that poor drone?  He's in a house with his mom and a few thousand os his sisters.  He's probably been dressed up, had his nails painted, and gotten make-overs a few hundred time each.  He better not even dream of leaving the toilet seat up. ;)