Drone Culling for Varroa Control

[mbc]

I have seen this said before. I don't doubt it, but upset how?

Disconbobulated

 

[BaconWizard]

Even if that were the case sterile drones at the end of the season isn’t really a problem?

Sure, but it's early season that is being mooted. And possible lingering effects rather than simply affecting the brood that were present at the time? (Thinking of comb absorbing toxins, that kind of thing) Just throwing ideas around here.

 

[BaconWizard]

Disconbobulated

Points for use of the word.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Sure, but it's early season that is being mooted. And possible lingering effects rather than simply affecting the brood that were present at the time? (Thinking of comb absorbing toxins, that kind of thing) Just throwing ideas around here.

But you don’t treat with Formic early in the season.

 

[Swarm]

I have seen this said before. I don't doubt it, but upset how?

Unnecessary stress
The colony is happy and content with their status, suddenly all the boys are disappearing so they are forced to react.

 

[BaconWizard]

But you don’t treat with Formic early in the season.

The suggestion was to use FA instead of the early-season drone culling advocated in the David Evans article. I think it's a bad one though.

 

[Ian123]

Disconbobulated

Mmmmm…. I think there’s some adding human feelings/perceptions to bees going on. I put frames of drone comb into my hives in the hope of producing lots for my queen rearing. At times when I’ve removed these a friends chickens go mad for the odd 1 during the season! Or the queen is replaced and I’ve not noticed. There has certainly been no I’ll effect's on any colony. No colony will be drone free during the season however much drone culling you practice, there’s just better/easier ways of mite control.

 

[mbc]

Mmmmm…. I think there’s some adding human feelings/perceptions to bees going on. I put frames of drone comb into my hives in the hope of producing lots for my queen rearing. At times when I’ve removed these a friends chickens go mad for the odd 1 during the season! Or the queen is replaced and I’ve not noticed. There has certainly been no I’ll effect's on any colony. No colony will be drone free during the season however much drone culling you practice, there’s just better/easier ways of mite control.

As with most things beekeeping its so multifactorial and nuanced its difficult to describe, I thought disconbobulated was a fair summary of the increased nervousness and agitation and general lack of bounce I believe I detected when compared to controls

 

[MJNT]

I read somewhere that varroa sought out drone brood with a 7 times increased frequency attracted by volatiles resulting from different food fed to drone larvae as opposed to worker larvae and drone culling plus an open mesh floor ( I know this again is not accepted as anything particularly useful in varroa control) results in a 50 % mite count reduction …. Can’t remember where and can’t remember it saying how much drone culling was needed and I don’t know if thd 7x increased rate of jumping into drone cells before capping had a significant effect on overall count but …. Does anyone know the source( I’m away or would look it up) and if it had scientific basis?

 

[JamezF]

I read somewhere that varroa sought out drone brood with a 7 times increased frequency attracted by volatiles resulting from different food fed to drone larvae as opposed to worker larvae and drone culling plus an open mesh floor ( I know this again is not accepted as anything particularly useful in varroa control) results in a 50 % mite count reduction …. Can’t remember where and can’t remember it saying how much drone culling was needed and I don’t know if thd 7x increased rate of jumping into drone cells before capping had a significant effect on overall count but …. Does anyone know the source( I’m away or would look it up) and if it had scientific basis?

The web page I linked to earlier cites:

Fuchs (1990) Preference for drone brood cells by Varroa jacobsoni Oud in colonies of Apis mellifera carnica. Apidologie 23:193-199

Boot et al., (1995) Invasion of Varroa jacobsoni into drone brood cells of the honey bee, Apis mellifera. Apidologie 26:109-116.

to support the claim that "given the choice between worker and drone, Varroa will infest drone brood at 8-11 times the level of worker brood".

James

 

[rolande]

David Evans (theapiarist.org) posted some interesting thoughts on drone culling a while back. If I recall correctly he's in favour, but only if it's done very early in the season.

I miss the days of fatshark (and a few others) posting on the forums.

Having not had chance to read the linked page yet I may be off target but it suggests that he's recommending the removal before their Scottish queen mating season kicks in, similarly Sue Cobey (in one of the talks she did for the New Zealand beekeepers) mentions that her last comb of drone brood gets removed, because, I imagine, her scheduled mating season will have finished by the time those drones are mature. My take on this is that both are using a tool which fits their specific local conditions.

 

[Ian123]

Part the problem with drone culling is if people put a frame in the average beek at some point or another will miss the magic window due to work….weather…life…beer and just end up breeding the bloody things…Again it’s wasteful limited in practical effects and there’s better options for varroa control.

 

[BaconWizard]

Part the problem with drone culling is if people put a frame in the average beek at some point or another will miss the magic window due to work….weather…life…beer and just end up breeding the bloody things…Again it’s wasteful limited in practical effects and there’s better options for varroa control.

I feel "seen"

With regard to the David Evans article, he was kind enough to reply to my email request for more clarification.

Since I didn't ask permission, I will not quote him directly.
However, the upshot was that he absolutely doesn't like drone-culling through the season, suspects that doing it once very early might have some use, but this too is rendered useless anyway by an ordinary treatment program (apivar, oxalic etc) which is the approach he actually takes.

 

[JamezF]

Since I didn't ask permission, I will not quote him directly.
However, the upshot was that he absolutely doesn't like drone-culling through the season, suspects that doing it once very early might have some use, but this too is rendered useless anyway by an ordinary treatment program (apivar, oxalic etc) which is the approach he actually takes.

That's interesting. I don't recall any of his later articles saying that he feels it's not useful if you're treating in the late summer and middle of winter, but there are a couple of years worth of articles since then so I may have missed it.

James

 

[BaconWizard]

That's interesting. I don't recall any of his later articles saying that he feels it's not useful if you're treating in the late summer and middle of winter, but there are a couple of years worth of articles since then so I may have missed it.

James

Yeah he may have moved-on. But it was clear from his reply that he treats conventionally and finds that the resulting mite-count in drone brood early-on is too small to be worth culling (especially because he wants drones around)

 

[Bazzer]

I use foundationless frames and do not treat - I see that often there is a proportion of drone brood that has been expelled. So left to their own devices the bees practice "drone culling" but in a much more targetted way.

 

[JamezF]

I use foundationless frames and do not treat - I see that often there is a proportion of drone brood that has been expelled. So left to their own devices the bees practice "drone culling" but in a much more targetted way.

David Evans discusses some cases in which this can happen on his site, too. If I recall correctly one of the times is when the bees have decided there isn't sufficient forage so they get rid of drone brood to save resources (sometimes in preference to getting rid of drones that have drifted in from other colonies). I'm sure he suggested other reasons, but I can't recall them right now.

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

Bees sacrifice worker brood to rid themselves of varroa.

 

[magor]

i like this guy and him funny too

 

[JamezF]

i like this guy and him funny too

Ok, so he claims he can cull the drones from his production hives because he doesn't want their genetics anyhow. I guess there's a chain of reasoning there, though clearly that's not practical for people who don't have the space or the colony numbers to have separate honey production and breeding apiaries. I wasn't aware that "the usual suspects" in terms of varroa treatments (or the residues that might be left in the wax) contribute to reduced drone viablity I have to admit, but if that is the case perhaps it could also be handled (in the UK at least) by treating during the winter and then culling the drone comb rather than the drones (for example by putting frames with a starter strip or foundationless frames into the hive before they start to raise drones and then replacing it at the end of the season?

He seemed rather coy about his treatment methods for his queen raising colonies, but I'm not sure I follow what he was suggesting that commercial breeders do. If he's concerned about treatment residues being in the wax, how does moving frames of drones from a treated colony to an untreated one help? Are they continually treating the source colonies for varroa perhaps? If feels to me as though there's some information missing there.

James