Eggs

[Finman]

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here is more from Wikipedia:

Queen Mandibular Protein, or QMP, is a honey bee pheromone produced by the queen and fed to her attendants who share it with the rest of the colony that gives the colony the sense of being queenright. Chemically QMP is very diverse with at least 17 major components and other minor ones. 5 of these compounds are: 9-ox-2-decenoic acid (9ODA) + cis & trans 9 hydroxydec-2-enoic acid (9HDA) + methyl-p-hydroxybenzoate (HOB) and 4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenylethanol (HVA). Newly emerged queens produce very little of this. By the sixth day they are producing enough to attract drones for mating. A laying queen makes twice that amount. QMP is responsible for inhibition of rearing replacement queens, attraction of drones for mating, stabilizing and organizing a swarm around the queen, attracting a retinue of attendants, stimulating foraging and brood rearing, and the general morale of the colony. Lack of it also seems to attract robber bees.[1]

 

[Samuel]

Hivemaker - now that i know what to look out for i would remove the drone layer from the coloney asap and depending on the size and state of the coloney either requeen or add the bees to another hive. my mistake this time was the time it took me to realise what was happening

 

[Poly Hive]

For what it is worth re queen mating.

There has been some serious moaning about poor matings over the last few winters. Blithely ignored has been the weather.

If the weather is rubbish so are the matings. If the matings are rubbish then drone layers increase.

It's really that simple to this simple mind.

The IOW disease (so called) co-incided with I read, some nasty winters and colony mortalities rose sharply. Guess what got blamed? Not the weather or poor winter feeding but that fancy disease... Ring any bells?

PH

 

[Heather]

Does the latest 'fashion' for culling drone grub frames to check for varroa diminish the mature drone population sufficiently to give weaker matings- or is that too insignificant a cull to have any effect. Bearing in mind that feral colonies are much less so those drones lost too.