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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: John Rintoul <beecd AT icloud.com>
  • Cc: Hamsiba Family <hamsibas AT gmail.com>, Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] White-eyed Drones
  • Date: Sun, 02 Aug 2015 15:53:08 -0400

I've never seen them "in person" but white-eyed drones apparently pop up enough for people to get a kick out of them. Here is a very brief explanation from Glenn Apiaries; they show some even weirder drone freaks too. The white thorax is really strange; here is a photo where somebody else had one.

Thanks for sharing another great reason to get out there and look at your bees!

Randall


On 8/2/2015 6:35 AM, Hamsiba Family wrote:

John,

Very cool stuff. This reminds me of raising fruit flies in genetics lab in college. They can get a number of different colored eyes. But no sting, no honey. Kind of like no pain, no gain!

As always, I am trying to gauge acceptability of different mite counts at different times of year. Do you consider 5 at this time of year to be low and acceptable?

Cheers, Brad

On Aug 2, 2015 12:09 AM, "John Rintoul" <beecd AT icloud.com> wrote:
I inspected one of my hives today and found a couple of oddities - white-eyed drones. There were about half a dozen scattered around various corners of the hive. The attached picture isn't great ( I should have turned off the flash), but you get the idea.

In addition to the white-eyed drones there was one drone with white eyes and a white thorax. I didn't get a picture of that one as the bees were getting tired of me by then.

And for those of you interested in my ongoing experiment with VSH bees, the mite count in this hive was 5. The queen is one generation removed from the original VSH Queen. The original queen left with a swarm this spring so the current matriarch is her daughter. Either mite counts are down for everyone this year or the VSH genes carry over even at half strength.



John Rintoul


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