Help with Drone colony

[Finman]

I think some raise drones for the purpose of varroa control. The differing hatch times allow removal of the drones, with varroa on them for disposal.

Can anyone confirm/correct that please?

No one raise drones for mites.( atleast who has brains) Bees like to do them without help.

Mites is more succesfull in drone comb because it has longer time there to multiply.

 

[tonybloke]

I think some raise drones for the purpose of varroa control. The differing hatch times allow removal of the drones, with varroa on them for disposal.

Can anyone confirm/correct that please?

some beekeepers encourage the production of drone comb ( and therefore drones) which are then culled when sealed as part of their IPM

 

[Silly Bee]

Thanks Tony, thats what I was told.

 

[tonybloke]

I use 16 x 10 frames in the brood, so I make up a frame using national sidebars with commercial top and bottom bars, thereby leaving a 2" space at the bottom of 1 frame per hive for drone comb

 

[Scutellator]

It's very foolish to raise queens and to not take care about the drones.
If you raise not more than 20 queens a week during the swarming season probably you may not bother about the drones, but after that the mating success will be poor.
The virgins literally suck out the available drones from the area, so better don't rely to the neighbour's drones.

The simpliest way to raise drones is to put empty drone comb (but only one) from the previous year( or, if you don't have ones, let the bees to draw the drone comb by themselfves, but this delay the drone rearing process) into the lower brood chamber (if you, like me, use two brood chambers).
The drone frame MUST not be in the middle. The best is - next to the near/far frame.
Take care to be present in the drone collony lots of polen and continious income of nectar (or feeding) at any time of the season. When the drone rearing stops, nothing can't force the queen to start laying drone eggs again, so be cautious. Keep the drone colony strong, add brood if necessary.

Late of the season you can make drone nursing collonies. Collect the emerging (or sealed) drone brood from the drone collonies and place them in freshly made collony between brood frames and add 2 frames with pollen and 1 or 2 frames with honey. Put virgin queen (or queencel) in a cage. Feeding is advisable.
Use the nursing collony only once.

Never use only a one drone collony. It's better to have a dozen of them, it provides the necessary diversity for the proper functioning of the collony. And you never know wich queen will produce the best drones.

The size of the frames matters. For some reason i couldn't force the queens in shallow frames to lay eggs in the drone comb. With langstroth frame i don't have those problems.

If you put a queen on an ice cube just for few minutes, she will become a drone layer. I do not recomend it, becauce it that case you turn permanently some of your best queens into drone layers and they can not be used for breeding after that.

Try to avoid chemicals treatments during drone and (queen) rearing. If you use chemicals, the treatments must be done before the drone rearing starts, to keep the varroa mites under control.


The drone rearing is much more tricky, than queen rearing.

 

[Finman]

.
Every hive rears drones. you wish or not. They do not need "encouragement". It is in their genes. Put over the hive an empty box without frames. You may get thousands of drones and you have one virgin queen.

Somehow Englishmen are mad with their mating problems and drones.

 

[Scutellator]

.
Every hive rears drones. you wish or not. They do not need "encouragement". It is in their genes. Put over the hive an empty box without frames. You may get thousands of drones and you have one virgin queen.

Somehow Englishmen are mad with their mating problems and drones.

Yes! Almost every hive rears drones. But not always in the quantity and certainly not in the quality you need. It is in their genes to stop rearing drones in times when you need them as well. Sometimes you don't need drones from ALL hives (certainly you don't need drones from those with bad genetics).

Because of the chemicals and varroa mites, today the vast majority of the drones do not reach sexual maturity.
In Bulgaria, if not taken measures, the rearing of drones stops in June and usually they are expelled shortly after that.


Finman, in the far north with your short summer you don't have the same issues as here, where not all the flowers bloom at the same time and the whole summer is swarming season. And surely in UK they have their own problems, different from mine and yours.