Boys kicked to the curb

Three weeks ago it was in the 90's. Last week a record 17 inches of rain. Last night it dipped into the 50's, you know what that means. The boys are kicked to the curb.

You can identify the drone, he's top left with the enormous eyes. The workers realize its getting cold signaling the end of the season. This means no more swarms and without the need to breed queens, all drones can be kicked out.
Drones can feed themselves and must rely on the worker bees (females) to feed them. To a bee hive they are an expense and come winter an expense that can be eliminated.

A quick look at the ground in front of the hive shows several dead drones evicted some time earlier.

I mentioned the rain it splashed lots of dirt up onto the hives. The bottom of my hives are open with 1/8 inch screen. I closed them up for the winter, actually fall starts in 2 days. But I also put down some weed barrier to cover the ground which is a rock covered soil. Here is a picture of the "dirt barrier"

The dirt on the gray barrier is the dirt that washed off the hives in the past week, it rained more.

Here is are pictures of Boulder Creek (at hwy 287) flood well out of its banks.