Bearding bees

[BeeMaster2]

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

[Rurification]

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. 

[divemaster1963]

My observevation is that they are mostly forigers with few nurse bees and drones. The nurse bees control the numbers in the hive.

John

[BeeMaster2]

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

[Michael Bush]

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.

[BeeMaster2]

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.