Drones are gone

[leominsterbeeman]

Over the last few days I've noticed that the drones in my observation are gone.  

My conventional wisdon tells me that this seems a little early to throw them out for the winter.    

The worker population is rising in the hive as well as the larva population and perhaps they don't want to wast the food on the drones.

Maybe they went out looking for a virgin queen and got lucky.  

Any other reasons?

[Queen Bee]

I was looking into one of my hives yesterday and on the front entrance were lots  of drones being thrown out. Several workers were dragging them from the entrance. Looked inside and most of the drones were in the top super walking around--almost none in the lowere supers or brood chambers! I thought the same thing--"it seems early" but maybe this is a sign of early winter/fall... DH father always said "Mother Nature is the very best weather man--watch, study and learn the signs'! Maybe it's true!

Anyone else know what's going on!

[leominsterbeeman]

Definitly something is up.  I went to  clear some tall grass near two of my hives. (They are about 3 miles from my house).  And there were lots of drones on the grass near the hives.  It was noticable the number of drones that were there.  

So here we are one week into Summer and these ladies are already getting ready for winter.    I guess we'll have snow on the 4th of July!