Pollen in November?

[Jeff L]

Alice, my bees here in CA are also bringing back loads of pollen. Mostly the normal yellow color, but noticed some with BRIGHT orange pollen today. The bees bringing it back really stood out! I'm in the 'burbs' so am thinking it comes from someones late blooming flowers as it's still sunny here. Maybe Lily's, there are lots of types and some have orange stamens and pollen.

Jeff

[tom]

Hello

   Nice looking picture i must say so myself and good looking honey as for the hairless bee i have seen in my NWC's that half of my workers are all black and some are brown and black. And i have also seen in my first hive that some of my girls are black at the head and the very end and the middle are a light blonde color but they are all good girls and now they are in thier winter cluster it is 20 degrees here and sunday they are calling for 60's and 70's. So it is in the breeding that you may get different color it is said by the older beekeepers that the queen mates with several drones on her mating flight so their are different daddies so they come out from which sperm cell the drones gave up.

Tom

[Finsky]

I hade carniolan 10 years but then i returned to italians again and my yield jumped 80%. The reason is only tendency of swarming.

  Overwintering population is smaller than that of other bee races, but during spring and summer, the population increases substantially to a comparable size to the other races.  They build up very rapidly in spring (reason why they are referred to as ‘spring honey flow bees”).  This characteristic allows the colonies to take full advantage of the EARLY honey flows,

I feeded bees with pollen in spring and I found that Italians' spring build up is as fast as carniolans' is they get pollen. Carniolan gahther bigger pollen store ovet winter and italians eate their stores before winter and rasie bigger winter ball.

When you try to get early yild, it means early raise up and big hive and swarming. Some Italian stock are slow to swarm and they are very easy to handle.

[Cindi]

Finsky, that was interesting what you say.  I think that this year I am not going to focus on any specific breed.  I thought that I would like to stick to Carniolan, but I think that I will just plain and simply get any that I can and be happy that I can.  I know the Italian do consume more winter food because they raise brood early, so what though?  Just make sure that they are fed enough for extra winter stores, if they consume so much.  I want to get more into some more wax production this year, and I hear that the Carniolan have cleaner wax.  Now I don't know that it makes a difference to me anyways, I don't really care what colour the wax is, in my eyes, wax is wax.  So, I have to wonder about people's experience if there is a specific breed that is prone to making higher wax production or do they all make about the same amount?  Strange question, but I would love an answer.  Great day. Cindi