Looking for love...the drone honeybee

The picture above is taken from today 24 March. Earlier this month the weather was warm and colonies began rearing brood.

In order for drones to be fully mature for potential queen mating colonies raise drones with early batches of brood, so no reason to worry about your queens productivity. It takes a drone roughly 2 weeks after emerging to become fully mature.

Since we had the recent cold snap these fellas won't be likely see any queens as colony production slowed. Just another example of honeybees constantly weighing the risk and reward of getting their genetics to "market" first.

Kevin