A few days ago, I had my first encounter with a bee hive- and I haven't even gotten my swarm shipment. I was in a thin area of trees where we keep our livestock when something fell out of the tree I was standing by and hit me on the head. It was a bee. I figured it would be a good test of my practical knowledge about bees, so I decided to figure out what kind of bee it was and why it was crawling on the ground and not flying. It was a drone with no visible illness, but the most interesting thing I saw on the ground was two more bees. Both were drones, and as I looked around I saw three or four more bees in a stream at the base of the tree- all drones as well. Looking up, I saw a knothole swarming with bees. I hurried home to consult my beekeeping books and parents. We decided the bees might be swarming. This was exciting, because if they swarmed, I would have a chance to capture my own swarm of bees. They would probably be africanized bees, which are very aggressive (they are the bees usually called "killer bees"), but there was a test for that and if they failed it I could just chase them out of my hive. But it never came to that. The bees didn't swarm, and I have no idea what made them kick out the drones in spring. Normally, drones are thrown out of the hive in winter, when food is short. The drones just sit around and eat food. So, when they run low on it, they throw out the drones and hatch new ones next spring.
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A picture I took of one of the drones. You can tell this bee is a drone from it's eyes. All bees have huge eyes, and this confused me at first, but only the drones eyes actually touch at the top.
Next week the bees will arrive, and my blog will be all about setting them up in their new home! The bees will be sent on the ninth and should be here by the eleventh.

Tags: bee tree, kicking out drones