After a couple of good snow storms lately, I went up to the hives to check them and remove any snow from the entrances. What I found was a lot of dead drones in the snow. A post I made a few weeks ago had me wondering why the workers had not thrown out the drones yet. All the big bees in this picture are the drones (males).
You can see the difference in their size compared to the worker in the right hand corner. So it truly is winter, the drones have been sacrificed from the hives. The workers and the queen cannot afford the free loaders throughout the cold weather!
Most interesting, Francine.
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