I have installed my new “Survivor Italians”. They are pooping all over the front of the hive and I am now a little worried about nosema. I hope they settle down and get their digestive tracks back to normal.
I am a little concerned about the races of my bees. I say races because the bright gold Italians that I just received show that my existing boxes are anything other than Italian.
When I first got my nucs last year, the bees were all golden yellow, but after a few months they darkened up. I was concerned that I had changed race, but I also thought that the older bees might be darker than the young ones. For a long time I had some dark bees and some lighter bees.
My hives each swarmed last year. So there was some mating going on, but with whom?
Now, looking at my old bees compared to my new bees, I am pretty sure that the was a Russian drone somewhere along the line and either my original queens or one of her successors had some Russian sperm stored away.
Martha is much darker than Connie who is much darker than my new hives (Ethel and Justine).
Here is Connie:
Here is Martha:
And here is one of the new bees from Justine:
It’s had to get a closeup of the bees, but I think you can see how dark Martha is. You can also see that Connie is darker than Justine, although has more in common.
Justine’s bees are smaller than with Connie or Martha, too, but that could be that I’ve been feeding Connie and Martha a gallon a week for the past month. The new hives have gone through 6 quarts each in two days, so they should be fat, too. I hope that the nosema is not too bad (you can see the poop in the last picture).
