Queens or Drones

[polomadh]

I have a particularly good hive this year, and will attempt to breed from it next year. I say attempt, as I am invariably playing catchup on QC's.

But it I had a thought, would I be better to get this hive next year to raise QC's through the various methods, or lots and lots of drones, by using drone foundation, to swamp the drones from my other hives?

 

[Finman]

sky is full of drones already. One hive does not have meaning in open mating.

You loose your yield when you let the drones burst in the hive. And you make a mite factory.

 

[polomadh]

Agreed, but if I could have more of the genes available from my best queen, wouldn't it be better?

 

[Finman]

Agreed, but if I could have more of the genes available from my best queen, wouldn't it be better?

Then you do it

Beekeepings goal is to produce drones... That is Real Man's talk!
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[Brian Bush]

The drones from your hives will not mate with the queens from your apiary. Drones fly for approx 20 mins to a DCA. Queens fly for 30 mins to a DCA. Drones have to wait 20 mins in the DCA and hope to get lucky and then have to fly back to re-fuel. Queens only need to be in the DCA for a couple of minutes and then return to their hive. Hence drones fly approx 1000 to 1500 m to a DCA. Queens fly up to 3 km to a DCA. It is God's way of ensuring that they don't mate with their drones or closely related drones. Finman is correct that a few hives do not produce enough drones to really alter the balance in an area. All beeks should cull drones from difficult hives. Remember that your queens will hold the semen of hopefully 15 or more drones, (unless you II).If you are going to open mate queens you have to rely on pot luck or be able to saturate an area of 3 km around your queens with desired drones. Alternatively you could use an Island to mate them(Sorry is this being banged to death on another thread??)

 

[Hivemaker.]

The drones from your hives will not mate with the queens from your apiary.

Why does a hive with a virgin queen keep all of their drones in late summer early autumn if they are of no use to them, as they will not mate with the virgin from their own hive?

 

[Finman]

Why does a hive with a virgin queen keep all of their drones in late summer early autumn if they are of no use to them, as they will not mate with the virgin from their own hive?

Like all other creatures: Spread genes!

In natural hives 1/4 of brood combs are for drones.

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[Swarm]

Nothing wrong with drones, the bees like them.

 

[Brian Bush]

Why does a hive with a virgin queen keep all of their drones in late summer early autumn if they are of no use to them, as they will not mate with the virgin from their own hive?

As the drones in a hive are direct copies of the queens genes, ie. they are unfertilized eggs and are haploid. A queen mating with such drones would produce drones eggs. If reared they would be triploid bees and sterile.
The bees keep the drones in the hive with a virgin queen as they assume other hives are in the same situation and are producing virgin queens that will require mating.
This evolutionary thing is very clever with all they checks and balances!!!

 

[Fusion_power]

As the drones in a hive are direct copies of the queens genes, ie. they are unfertilized eggs and are haploid. A queen mating with such drones would produce drones eggs. If reared they would be triploid bees and sterile.
The bees keep the drones in the hive with a virgin queen as they assume other hives are in the same situation and are producing virgin queens that will require mating.

A queen mating with a drone(s) sharing a common sex allele will still produce 50% viable worker (or queen) eggs. If an egg is laid with both sex alleles identical, a drone is produced, but it is a diploid drone, not triploid. Please read about Arrhenotokous parthenogenesis for details. Anthropomorphising that bees "think" is unlikely to explain why bees keep drones late in the fall when they do not have a laying queen. Occam's razor suggests the simplest explanation is that they don't have a mated laying queen therefore they keep drones as a survival mechanism so their virgin queen can mate. I have often observed a few drones in about 10% of my colonies over winter. One trick I have used in the past is to make a colony queenless so they will maintain drones for late season mating. This has worked as late as early November resulting in queens that produced a crop of honey the next year.

 

[polomadh]

What I was trying to say, from my original post is that I had always worked on the basis of trying to raise queens from my "best" hive, to mate with the drones from my other hives. But if I turn this on it's head, is it just as effective to try to get my most productive hive to raise as many drones as possible during the mating season, to mate with the queens from my other hives. I understand the haploid interbreeding issue (and have seen it first had this year) which is not what I was thinking.

 

[Finman]

As said, no sense to put your best hive to produce them drones.

IT is statistically impossible to make influence into the genepool of your area.

IT does not earn any diploid haploid allele explanations.

Do you know, how many other hives you have inside the radius of 2 miles?

And best hive out of 4 hives

 

[Finman]

A queen mating with a drone(s) sharing a common sex allele will still produce 50% viable worker (or queen) eggs. If an egg is laid with both sex alleles identical, a drone is produced, but it is a diploid drone, not triploid. Please read about Arrhenotokous parthenogenesis for details. Anthropomorphising that bees "think" is unlikely to explain why bees keep drones late in the fall when they do not have a laying queen. Occam's razor suggests the simplest explanation is that they don't have a mated laying queen therefore they keep drones as a survival mechanism so their virgin queen can mate. I have often observed a few drones in about 10% of my colonies over winter. One trick I have used in the past is to make a colony queenless so they will maintain drones for late season mating. This has worked as late as early November resulting in queens that produced a crop of honey the next year.

And that has nothing to do with production of drones.

Why you rear queens in November?

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[REDWOOD]

If you want to produce good drones for close by apiaries from a selected hive, place a shorter frame in that hive.

 

[oliver90owner]

Just raise lots of queens and select only those with your wanted traits for your future colonies. There will always be lots of rejected progeny. Who wants continually inbred queens?

 

[wightbees]

Work with what you have, it all helps. The less crappy Drones in the air the better!

 

[Finno]

To perpetuate their genes - failing successful queen mating they can do so via drones.

 

[stilllearning]

I happen to think it's a good idea, and as for DCA apparently fairies live there as well