Peter Chiang Mai asked "My thought here was could this be a deficient queen that simply needed replacing. But then I wondered why this was happening on both colonies, it seems improbable that that both queens would exhibit the same behaviour at the same time. Does anyone have a view as to what else this could be?" Peter, these colonies sound to me to be quite normal. The presence of normal worker and drone brood, and a large population of drones in strong, active hives, indicates that the pollen supply has been good for some time, although the onset of the wet season may have brought those floral conditions to a close. Do you know what the floral source has been for the past 4-8 weeks? In Chapter 2 of his book "Breeding Super Bees", the late Steve Taber has a nice table relating observations on drone stages in the colony and conclusions that can be drawn about the pollen supply to the colony. His explanations of how pollen availability and utilisation can be inferred from what we see when we look at the drone population dynamic are very insightful, and valuable. It appears to me that you have not described the classic "drone layer", or a "failing" queen trending towards drone layer, although from what you have told us, its not really possible to conclude anything definitive about the queens. However, it sounds more likely that they have been doing the right things under what appear to have been good conditions. I suspect the reason you have not had more responses from the list is that we temperate region beeks are reluctant to venture into "diagnosticating" (!) on your observations in the tropical (or is it sub-tropical?) environment. I for one however, am very interested in all your observations about how mellifera bees perform in that environment. For example, I am curious about drones survival in that climate. In the temperate regions with a definite winter period, the drone population has a definite seasonality, with little or no drone production in the colder months, and even rejection of the adult drones to avoid the nutritional cost of sustaining colony members that are past their use-by date and are essentially no longer required. Does the same thing happen where you are, or are drones present in the hive year-round? I ask this because my understanding of the prime reason why drones supply fluctuates, is in fact pollen supply, not environmental temperature. PeterD in Western Australia, where sometimes last seasons old drones can still be in the hives in the following spring! *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm