Pam Hunter - Sex life of honeybee

[Jon]

Newly emerged bees are lighter for a few hours.

[prakel]

Do all the strains not get darker as they age, I'm sure I've noticed this with my dark mongrels?

Hi, perhaps, but here I'm referring to a very definite shift in colouration in highly hybridized stocks. We often see certain stocks where the vast majority of bees present for a month or so in early spring are almost all of a clear carnica 'type' at least in appearance. As the season advances orange banded bees become far more apparent until they definitely outnumber the ones without that colouration. It's perhaps not the easiest observation to relate but I'm definitely not seeing 'orange' bees loosing their colour through age.

As mentioned earlier, it's even more interesting (to me) to see sister colonies mated from the same apiary which show no observable change in colour at all.