EastBoro October Hive Update

From Beekeepers, James & Nadine:

The honeybees on the rooftop of 8251 Greensboro were as busy as ever as the days shortened and temperatures dropped in October. The hive’s worker bees continued collecting pollen and nectar from the last fall blooms of goldenrod, aster and chrysanthemum of the year. They were also busy pollinating the last of the tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and peppers just a few hundred feet away in the garden as your Harvest Table season concluded.

Your queen bee is still laying eggs at an impressive rate even as the bees prepare to downsize their colony going into winter. This month the worker bees have been capping the last of the honey stores they’ve built up through the last few months with wax. This process also signals the final days of the male drone bees. A drone’s only responsibility is to mate with another colony’s queen. Otherwise, they do not do any tasks related to rearing young, cleaning the hive or foraging for resources. So when the colony’s resources started to get tight this month, the guard bees physically blocked the drones from re-entering the hive. That means that it’s just the queen and her many thousand daughters in the hive until next spring. It may seem harsh, but the colony knows best!

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