Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
I'm so curious to see if there will be noticeable differences in colony behavior and mite resistance using these isolated drones compared to what's around my own bee yards. For fun we took up 8 different lines of virgin queens so in retrospect that might complicate the comparison.
I should also admit that while all 10 of the nucs I took up had brood I should have inspected them deeper despite the drizzle. one that was started with a cell had beautiful capped brood and a few supersedure cells but no queen and it would have been a perfect candidate for leaving up there and dropping a new virgin queen. The first weak nuc I inspected made it's own emergency queen and she appears to have been a drone layer. I'm still happy with 80%
I'm so curious to see if there will be noticeable differences in colony behavior and mite resistance using these isolated drones compared to what's around my own bee yards. For fun we took up 8 different lines of virgin queens so in retrospect that might complicate the comparison.
I should also admit that while all 10 of the nucs I took up had brood I should have inspected them deeper despite the drizzle. one that was started with a cell had beautiful capped brood and a few supersedure cells but no queen and it would have been a perfect candidate for leaving up there and dropping a new virgin queen. The first weak nuc I inspected made it's own emergency queen and she appears to have been a drone layer. I'm still happy with 80%
