How much drone brood is normal?

[dolbz]

I did a full inspection of my colony today and there is quite a large amount of drone brood. It's mainly at the bottom of the brood frames and there's some on nearly all of the frames that currently have brood.

There's still a lot of worker brood too so I don't think the queen is a drone layer (or has recently become one)

So is this normal? The colony seems to have come through the winter very well and has loads of bees. On the whole they seem to be thriving.

 

[CliffDale]

Good question!

I went through my hives today to find frame 1 full of capped honey. Frame 2 was all drone brood! This sent shivers down my back. The rest of the frames were normal brood. Must be a well organised queen.

I was tempted to take the frame away but I thought the boys will be useful to have around!

Cliff

 

[Ruth85]

We have exactly the same and i started to panic too but as you say there is still plenty of worker brood. Glad i am not the only one worried.

 

[Andy Coleman]

Interesting question, to which I don't know the answer! But like several of the others responding I have seen what seems like more drone brood than I seem to remember in a couple of colonies. I wonder if it is something to do with the weather pattern - I've heard views that Spring was held back, then has come all at once with the recent warm weather, which might mean we get a significant June gap this year. I suppose colonies will be triggered to start to generate drones in time to be ready for mating when swarming begins.

There was a lot of uncapped drone brood in one hive, which I've left for later & once capped will probably remove and have a look at how many varroa they are harbouring!

 

[YorkshireBees]

Looking at the 5 colonies I inspected yesterday there is a mixed level of drone brood, with some neatly formed capped drone brood along the bottom two rows on some frames to some colonies adding it under the bottom of frames. I only saw one drone bee in one colony actually hatched and on the frame, then again I wasn't concentrating on the drone levels!

If frames are not overly populated by drone brood I would not worry too much at this point!