Drone Brood

[ashley hunter]

I posted a little while ago about my suspicions that I had a hive that was Queenless / Drone laying queen. During the warm weather of last week I had a another quick look. Lots more sealed brood - all drone and very patchy. I will shake them out ( though when it’s much warmer - snowing here today !!!! )
My question is I am going to be left with frames with various stages of drone brood - do I remove what I can with a capping fork ? What happens to what’s left - smaller uncapped brood ?? Can the frames be re-used ?? Or am I best just ditching the brood frames and saving the frames with stores for my other hives?? Or get rid of the lot ??

 

[Ian123]

Ditch the frames not worth the hassle.

 

[Boston Bees]

I posted a little while ago about my suspicions that I had a hive that was Queenless / Drone laying queen. During the warm weather of last week I had a another quick look. Lots more sealed brood - all drone and very patchy. I will shake them out ( though when it’s much warmer - snowing here today !!!! )
My question is I am going to be left with frames with various stages of drone brood - do I remove what I can with a capping fork ? What happens to what’s left - smaller uncapped brood ?? Can the frames be re-used ?? Or am I best just ditching the brood frames and saving the frames with stores for my other hives?? Or get rid of the lot ??

Depends how much of the frame is taken up with brood. If there is a circle of brood that can easily be cut out, leaving useful comb around the outside, I do that. If not, I ditch the whole frame.

You can in theory (assuming no disease) give a frame of dead drone brood to a healthy colony and they will sort it out, but I don't like doing it personally.

Keep the stores frames of course - very useful.

 

[ashley hunter]

Thanks for the advice. I will heed beeno’s advice from my first post - I should have merged it with another hive in the autumn as I was pretty sure it was queenless then. Still it’s all a learning curve.

 

[polymath]

Chickens love the old brood feed the frames to them, about all that is worth doing with them, melt out wax and move on in my view. Had a drone laying queen this year.

 

[ericbeaumont]

Can the frames be re-used?

Yes, but chop out the combs, boil the frames in water + washing soda, rinse and refit foundation.

Worth the bother?