A lot of the first brood I observed seems to have been drones. When I first saw the capped comb I thought they looked too domed for worker brood, but never having seen either in person before I was not sure. Is it normal for queens to lay a bunch of drones when they are starting their laying career? I don’t know. Since then I have observed lots of capped worker brood, so I am not worried about the drone production. Just curious.
Though the drones were obviously young, having hatched in the last few weeks, I found a number of dead ones. Did they kill each other or did they get killed by workers?
Getting the bees to build their comb such that it lines up with the bars on a top bar hive is a pretty significant initial challenge. I don’t know if using a Langstroth hive would ’solve’ this problem, but fuller frames seem likely to help.
Sometimes on a hot sunny day the bees have a really active period. Then they stop abruptly when the wind picks up or a cloud covers the sun. This makes me nervous about swarms, but I am also skeptical, since I haven’t seen any swarm cells and I still seem to have a lot of bees.
Some workers are lighter and some are darker. I don’t know why this is. It could be that some are from my queen and some are from the initial batch. It could be that younger workers are lighter or darker than older ones. It could be a seasonal difference.
During my last inspection, I made very similar observations. (If I actually can find some time, I’ll post about it on my blog). LOTS of drones. I think when we each initially got our bees, there were only worker bees, and during the summer, there is always a population of drones around – so we were just not used to seeing them.
Since drones don’t have stingers, I don’t think they are killing each other. Either they die of “normal” causes, or maybe the workers are regulating their numbers..?
I think you are right about the colors – all the bees with the darker markings are the new bees. I think our Queens are probably a slightly different breed than the worker bees that they were shipped with. I eventually expect to have all my bees look like these darker kinds.