They tell me this is normal but wow, that’s a lot of dead bees in front of the hive. Apparently all of the drones get kicked out…as useless resource consumers in the winter!
I scraped the bottom board to prevent too much of a build up. Significant carnage collected in the empty ice-cream bucket!
And, the bees were buzzing around a little today. I guess it was warm enough for a winter defecation flight. They don’t defecate in the hive over the winter but store up the waste in their bodies until it’s warm enough to sneak outside. I was recently reading that the bees have an expandable rectum – I guess so!