Six weeks ago, I hived a cast from Jane and I've taken photos inside the
hive, one ten days ago and one today. Both photos show bees of
strikingly different colours: they're all stripey and some are quite
golden and some quite dark. Jane tells me that the bees in her hive are
mainly golden in colour, so the dark bees presumably get their colouring
from the drones the queen mated with. The bees in my other hive are
generally dark and I guess drones from that hive could well have been in
the congregation that the virgin queen flew to. And presumably she
would have mated with drones from other colonies too. I knew in theory
that there would be lots of half-sisters in a colony, but I found it
really interesting to see this in practice.
Gilliane
--
from Gilliane Sills
The Map House
Vernon Avenue
Oxford
OX2 9AU
01865 721644
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