Removed frame of Drone brood....

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Question is - why did you remove it? Were you just taking it out to check some of the brood for varroa levels?

If you have a high varroa count, you could get rid of the drone brood - a lot of the mites would be ditched that way as well.

I wouldn't scrap the brood just for the sake of it though, and if your varroa levels are okay I'd leave it in the hive (assuming you didn't have some other reason for removing it). Drones aren't just there as a canary in the coalmine for varroa levels...
 
Did you uncap all the drone brood and inspect them? Once you've done that I would leave it out for the birds to pick at for a day - you can then put it back in the hive for the bees to clean up and re-use.
 
I did exactly what you said FREEFALL.
To answer SCUTTLEFISH, we were advised by our mentor and others in our association to do this.
As a new beekeeper this is what I find confusing. Perhaps to many people know too much about something bees have been doing for far longer than we have been interfering.
 
I agree with Scuttlefish. It's good to have drones in each hive, you never know when you'll need some (virgin Queens gotta do the funky shuffle with something you know:biggrinjester:)
 
So it's all about bees, not birds?
 
You don't want the birds getting involved, they love a nice fat sacraficial virgin:drool5::rolleyes:
 
Leaving it in?

How many drones do you really need?

I run 14 x 12s and if I put in a shallow frame from a super, I could easily get best part of 5000 drones at a helping.

Even if only one in ten has a mite that is half the threshold loading removed, (or returned, if you follow some above).

This is not a manipulation without cost. They have built that foundation and fed those drone larvae already; bees taken out of the normal production line, fewer worker larvae by that number. So I don't use it as a varroa treatment these days unless I had good reason for so doing. Drone brood uncapping is a good measure of varroa as a diagnostic tool, however.

So generalising (or assuming all have the same hive format) is not good. Thinking a little deeper, would be good for some.
 
Work it out? Will certainly be a bit less than that (I did say 'best part of'). Might be 2501, but the example was there as exactly that - something to demonstrate ball park figures, at least in the right order of magnitude.

Less than 200mm deep and drone brood - so fewer than worker cells. It was quoted that high to make some think. Glad you have noticed. Now is your chance to work it out - you wouldn't then be so likely to forget. Well done for at least questioning it.
 
OK, so some rough calculations - let's say a 14 x 8 inch area, both sides and 18 drone cells to the square inch (this figure seems to vary so I've taken the highest number I found).

14 x 8 x 2 x 18 = 4032

However, the percentage of drones in a colony are given variously at between 5% and 20% of the total population - depending on time of year, whether they are in swarm mode and whether they are a managed or feral colony etc. So in a 50,000 strong colony you could expect from 2500 to 10,000 drones BUT they would not all be larvae / capped brood of course. Many of these would be adults.

I guess my question was really whether the bees/queen would have the disposition to create and lay up that much space with drone in a relatively short space of time if given the opportunity. I've come to the conclusion that it's very unlikely that they would.
 
So in a 50,000 strong colony you could expect from 2500 to 10,000 drones BUT they would not all be larvae / capped brood of course. Many of these would be adults.

That upper number seems far too high, wouldn't have thought workers would allow that many
 
More importantly is the number of cells with varroa in them, If one in ten that is an extra 400 mites. Or is it?

24 days for a drone c/f worker brood so that extra three days may allow an extra one or two mites to mature in the cells before emergence. So that extra 400 mites could be 1200. Not good, that. I don't encourage mites to breed in my colonies.

RAB
 
That upper number seems far too high, wouldn't have thought workers would allow that many

Do an experiment,stick two or three supers of drone combs on without a queen excluder.
 
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