Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: tom on May 30, 2006, 05:07:47 pm
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Hello
I want to ask you guys something lately i have been having problems with hive two but after my third inspection they have all but two and a half frames to finish drawing out. Now one of the frames has brood from the top to bottom and a ton of young bees. This hive is carniolan mixed with cordovan's italians now my first hive is all black in color but my second hive is turning out very few dark bees most of them are starwberry blonde color is this possible that they are not carniolans but italians because some are black but the drones are grey and gold color and some are grey and black and these are bigger then the gold color ones.Now my queen is pure carniolan but why is my wokers and drones are coming out a strawberry color and not like the first hive. I also got a five frame nuc of three banded italians from a freind and they are hot and i am going to requeen them soon does any one know where to get carniolans queens that are bred with carniolan drones and are mine a NWC bee.
TOM
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Some things to note concerning the color of bees:
1. The qeens mate more than once and often mate with drones of different sub-species which can mean different color of brood from the same queen.
2. Packaged bees are not as important to the supplier as the queen, when you order packaged bees you are specifing the type of queen not the types of workers that accompany her. The bees in the package can come from several different hives having different parentage.
3. Shades of bees can be dependant on sex (i.e. the drones are more grayer than the workers, etc.) or vary from a darker to a lighter variation within that associated with the sub-species.
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Also, drones tend to drift from hive to hive, so you may be looking at drones that did not hatch from your hive.
Perhaps this is how vorroa spread so readily from hive to hive, especially since the mite prefers drone brood... As the drones traveled about they deposited mites in unsuspecting colonies?
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NWC's (and carnis in general) are not all black. There are always some brown mixed in. The queens vary from all black to black with brown stripes. AND, of course, if they are open mated they may mate with other drones. If most of the queens a producer are getting are black and a good portion of the workers are black that's about all you get with any Carnioians. I've had queens that were supposedly Carnis that were Cordovan. In theory Cordovan is a color, not a breed, but all the Cordovans I've seen were Italians. Was this one a carni? I don't know.
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Hello
I guess you all have a point so far the bees in my second hive is a mixed breed the queen is pure carni and she was bred with the cordavan drones. They are not as active as my first hive and the nuc i got is working better then the second hive but the second hive is full of bees and they are some what working a little better but not like the other two. They have a young queen and so far she is laying good brood patterns and now i am seeing more of a dark bee and some of the other color too but i have no problems with them i am guessing that most of the bees that came with the package were all young and never left out of the hive but they are doing alot of play flights and the biggest portion of them are the cordovans and some carni's.
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Also, don't forget that drones come from UNfertilized eggs. They have no father and their coloriation may not be the same as the workers.