Thursday, February 18, 2010

The Boys are Back!

I've been imagining for a couple of weeks now that I've been seeing drone cells. They were lighter in color and had slightly puffier cappings than the worker cells that I was used to seeing. But today, when we briefly opened the hive to show our new friend Martin, I was left in no doubt as to what a drone cell looks like. The second frame was covered with bulging, domed drone cells! The boys are back, and it's spring!

We met Martin last week at a community meeting. He is a recent transplant from Berkeley, who has an 'urban farm' in Livermore where figs and chickens abound. He tells the tale of his urban farm and other adventures on his blog, which we highly recommend.

In other news, there's going to be a community garden at work! While riding my bike down East Ave. today, I had this genius brainstorm that we should start a community garden in some of the open space surrounding the lab. When I got to work I made the suggestion to the right people and learned that it is already in progress. Yay! Also of note is that the top bar hive is almost complete thanks to the hard work of Tim and Al (my dad). Pics to follow soon.

2 comments:

  1. Can't wait to see your top bar hive. As for drones in Spring, that's strange. Aren't they suppsed to come in late summer only?

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  2. Wow! Someone other than my parents is reading my blog. Very exciting:) I'm obviously new to this whole beekeeping thing, but I think drones generally show up in the spring. Here's my logic: Colonies swarm in the spring, taking the old queen with them, and the bees that are left behind have to make a new queen who needs to make baby bees if the colony is going to survive. And if the new queen is going to make baby bees, she has to mate with someone. And if the drones only show up in late summer, I think they would be a little late to the party, if you know what I mean. That's what I think anyway.

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