[oxnatbees] Re: different bee colours

  • From: "Gilliane Sills" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "gillianesills" for DMARC)
  • To: oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Barbara Elizabeth Robinson <liz20swan@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2021 23:34:30 +0100

The hive is a Golden hive that I made this spring, and it's deeper than it's wide.  I attach another photo showing more of the internal depth and a photo of the hive taken during its assembly in position, before the frames were in, and before the eke and roof were on.  And the quality of the photos is just luck!  The bees are building comb at the entrance end of the hive, and to get the photos, I moved the follower board away from its position near the middle of the hive and took photos holding my mobile phone in the space I'd created.  I couldn't really see what I was taking - that's where the luck came in!  The bees didn't seem to mind - I guess they were just getting on with whatever they were doing.

Gilliane

On 15/07/2021 21:53, Barbara Elizabeth Robinson wrote:

Hi Gilliane.
What type of hive are these bees in? And how did you get such good photos?
Liz Robinson


On Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 18:15 Gilliane Sills <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

    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


--
from Gilliane Sills

The Map House
Vernon Avenue
Oxford
OX2 9AU

01865 721644

Attachment: IMG_20210715_1540374a.jpg
Description: JPEG image

Attachment: IMG_20210505_1017594a.jpg
Description: JPEG image

Other related posts: