Drone Importance

[BrianO]

Hi All

This is a topic I find really interesting

Seems to be more importance being attached to these guys recently . It Seems at times are much maligned little guys with a bad Rep... viewed as unproductive and lazy, bar their vital mating role.

Just finished a good book highlighting this , and today in the latest edition of our national bee monthly missal An Beachaire which devoted quite a bit of verbage to highlighting the importance of hives having healthy populations of Drones .

Appreciate the varroa issue of they being able to spend longer sealed with bee brood, but the suppression of drone brood has to be more damaging in relation to genetic diversity.

Interestingly the article in our publication highlighted a study which showed a far greater number of Drones found in DCA' Drone congregation areas in African sites than in European ones. Appreciate the different species of bees on both continents, but the less regimented management techniques employed in African areas in this case might be better re a larger and more diverse gene poll for Queenie to access.

Surely we should be letting the Bees decide as to how much of their colonies they wish to devote to Drone brood ? . Surely foundation stamped only to encourage worker brood is an ultimately negative manipulation of the hive to suit our endgame . Maybe the colonies would be better deciding the ratio of brood that should be worker and drone ?

Or maybe I don't know what I am talking about. , but would love to hear some views ??

 

[REDWOOD]

Very important to have healthy drones in a colony and giving them a short frame bees are able to build their own drone comb below it, however I cull drone brood in defensive colonies as I don't want that sort in the gene pool

 

[Tom Bick]

I love natural comb and the way the bees go about building it with this also comes the fascinating relationship of worker and drone. We often talk about the ejection of drones from the hive in the autumn but this love hate relationship goes on throughout the season. Drones are so important.

 

[La Folie]

Worth reading 'Rose Hive Method' by Tim Rowe. He too believes drones should be left and drones help keep a hive healthy. Perhaps we interfere and impose our ideas too much; let the bees decide.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

bees will refashion the comb to allow more drone cells so i wouldn't get my knockers in a twist - the colony will aim for about 20% drone whatever foundation we give them

 

[Tom Bick]

bees will refashion the comb to allow more drone cells so i wouldn't get my knockers in a twist - the colony will aim for about 20% drone whatever foundation we give them

They do like approx 20% drone comb in the hive but on foundation seldom achieve it. They try their best, brace, lumps of drone comb off the bottom of frames and even chew bits of foundation away to create space fore drone comb but in most cases fall well short of the 20% they would produce given empty frames. A hive with a healthy drone population will have literally 1000's of drones and something that needs getting used to for most beekeepers.

 

[BrianO]

Indeed, planning on running two maybe three of my hives on strip foundation next year , with honey production as not the holy grail.

Rose Hive method.... or a derivative of, should be interesting.

Will be fascinated to see how they will do unrestricted, actually expanding and behaving ( as much as a colony can when housed ) in a more unhindered natural fashion.



What if there was a swing towards more conducive conditions for drone rearing, would we see stronger colonies through more genetic diversity with our newly mated queens ??

Interesting perhaps ??

 

[oliver90owner]

Personally, I might go with the 20% drone population in a thriving colony but I doubt very much they need anywhere near 20% drone comb to achieve that number. Or do drones only live one brood cycle? If there needed to be that much drone brooding comb, that would equate to around 2 1/2 frames not used for worker brood per box (National with full complement of hoffman frames).

If that (2 1/2 frames) was anywhere near correct, only about half of it, or less, would be required for actual drone brood rearing. Presumably the rest might be used for honey or nectar storage? But that would leave only 9 frames or so for worker brood (at best, because the outer frames are most often not used for brooding) and with the honey arch, that might only leave 25k worker brood cells in use. Not enough when the number of drones is adequate, methinks!

 

[Tom Bick]

Is pritty much 20% drone comb rab sometimes slightly less sometimes slightly more sometimes concentrated on three to four frames but often reasonably spread throughout the frames but tend to be towards the outer part of the frames with smaller patches more central in the brood nest. I don't know if the bees maintain 20% drone population but sometimes the hives are full of 1000's of drones often pushed to the outer frames but the big incentive for the bees in producing this many drones is to send them off into the big bad world distributed throughout many hives looking for a virgin so they can pass on their genes to a new generation of bees. It's another way of reproduction to the bees the other been swarming and perhaps a greater risk to the colony.

 

[DulwichGnome]

They try their best, brace, lumps of drone comb off the bottom of frames and even chew bits of foundation away to create space fore drone comb but in most cases fall well short of the 20% they would produce given empty frames.

Best be aware that if you use a starter strip then they will make drone size comb to store honey at the end of the year. If, like me, you leave a box of honey on top for the winter, by spring they have worked their way up into it and when the queen starts to lay it can create a lot of drones.

Mike.

 

[Tom Bick]

It all depends when you give them starter strips or empty frames that may make them just build drone comb. Also the position of that new box may influence things. I have found that my bees still produce a mix of worker and drone comb in my supers sometimes on big flows you get a comb that is neither one or the other and built in a rush without a slide rule. I experimented this year with removing a queen excluder and it did not go to plan not a complete disaster but not great. I may try anther hive or two this next year but at the moment feel happy with the queen excluder. On my single broods I generally always give them a part or full super but place this under the bb for winter.

 

[Little John]

Personally, I might go with the 20% drone population in a thriving colony ...

I think that's very close to it, I'd just emphasise thriving full-sized colony, for if you raise NUCs from NUCs, as it were, you'll notice that very few drone cells tend to be drawn within foundationless comb. The colony seems to recognise the vulnerability of it's small size, and that it's immediate survival depends on the creation of much larger numbers of workers.

LJ

 

[Finman]

.
You get your few queens mated even if you do have a single drone in your hives.
If you believe that it is your hives where drones are best quality in the village, you have no hope when you try to breed your bees. You are not the only beekeeper in the district.

 

[Finman]

.
20% drone brood is impossible in a foundation hive. It is a figure of feral colony.
If a mouse breakes much combs in winter, then you get much drones.
10 frames of brood of which 2 are drone brood..... No. I squeeze first the queen.

Bees have many kind of wishes in their life, which do not come true. Like send 2 swarms during summer and sting 50 times the nurser.

 

[Fatbee]

I've just started to read the Buzz about Bees by Jurgen Tautz (a very good read so far btw) who highlights that logically for a species that produce so few females with breeding potential; it's strange that they produce so many males - it should be the other way round considering one male can produce a lot more sperm than a queen eggs. In mammals the ratio is about 50:50 but bees probably 1:to several thousand. I haven't got to the answers yet but surely it's going to the deeper route of the species development and is linked to ensuring genetic diversity isn't it? Sadly my GSCE biology lessons are long since gone from my memory so will hopefully be taught by Tautz as I progress through.

On a more observational point, poor weather is often blamed for poor mating but this summer I still had one or two queens replaced a couple of months after the new queens raised in the spring had started laying despite there being fantastic mating flight weather. Are we too quick to blame poor weather and are there other reasons for poor mating (drone infertility?) that we're overlooking?

 

[oliver90owner]

I recall several occurrences where the queen may only have flown on one day and then not for several (more than two) so may have only been partially mated. Don't know whether that should impact on early supercedure or not, but might affect max lay rate or some other facet related to early supercedure.

She needs consistently good flying days, which is not always the case in the UK. Inconsistency was very much the case earlier in the season, as I recall.

 

[Fatbee]

Thanks. Could have been but the two colonies in question I thought timed it well with regards to the weather. Looking back in my diary the period of when I would have expected mating flights was between 14th and 18th May which down here in Bucks had c.20-25 degree days. But of course, I wasn't present when they hatched so I could have been out by a day or two and we did get some stormy weather either side of that. Sadly, being the amateur rather than relying on this for a living does demonstrate attention to detail is sometimes lacking.

If conditions are warm, calm and settled, do people know if the number of flights to get mated varies queen by queen? Are we talking, 1, 2, up to 5? Or is this still very much the unknown?)

 

[Little John]

I've just started to read the Buzz about Bees by Jurgen Tautz (a very good read so far btw) who highlights that logically for a species that produce so few females with breeding potential; it's strange that they produce so many males - it should be the other way round considering one male can produce a lot more sperm than a queen eggs. In mammals the ratio is about 50:50 but bees probably 1:to several thousand.

I don't think so. Even with the sperm from several drones onboard, queens can sometimes run out - but keep on laying eggs.

It's also important to recognise that the overwhelming majority of sperm are not used to pass-on DNA to the next generation (as with mammals), but to produce females incapable of reproduction.

LJ


I've just figured it out ...

Figures for a typical human ejaculation are between 200-500 million sperm.
Of these, typically only one 'gets lucky' to pass on it's DNA to the next generation. That's a ratio of 1:>200 million.

With bees, only (say) 1 in every million sperm gets to become included within the DNA of a queen bee, and by doing so, thus influence future evolution.
With only 1 sperm effectively passing on it's DNA via a queen, in order to achieve the same sort of competitive ratio as that seen in humans, we would therefore need to produce >200 million drones for each queen mating.

Ok, so it's never that high, but a few thousand drones competing for a single queen doesn't now seem quite so unreasonable.

 

[Finman]

If conditions are warm, calm and settled, do people know if the number of flights to get mated varies queen by queen? Are we talking, 1, 2, up to 5? Or is this still very much the unknown?)

Those are very well researched and time how long queens spend on each flight.
Do beeks know.... It is another thing. So much old fairy tales are going on.

 

[mintmoth]

Can I ask a newbie question about drones, please? (Well, two actually)

Is there something about the queen's pheremones that discourages drones from her own hive in the mating game, and makes those drones more attracted to queens from 'foreign' hives, so that the chances of a complete outcross are improved, and inbreeding reduced?

And I read that drones will be tolerated and allowed to enter into any hive. Is that right?