Green Drone Foundational Frames

[Ben Framed]

When do you usually place your green drone foundational frames in your area? Drawn as well as Undrawn?

Edit:
Let me rephrase the question; For you who use green drone frames to boost drone production for the particular reason of queen rearing, usually (add) your green drone foundational frames into your hives in your area? Drawn as well as Undrawn?

[BeeMaster2]

Never.
Removing drone brood will cause the bees to waste more resources to make more drone brood.
Jim Altmiller

[Ben Framed]

Never.
Removing drone brood will cause the bees to waste more resources to make more drone brood.
Jim Altmiller

Sorry Jim, Let me rephrase the question; For you who use green drone frames to boost drone production for the particular reason of queen rearing, usually (add) your green drone foundational frames into your hives in your area? Drawn as well as Undrawn?




                                                                                                                                                                             

[AR Beekeeper]

I usually have drone frames in the brood nest in October when I begin to feed for winter so that they may be filled with winter stores.  If for some reason I don't have them in the hive I make sure to put them in the first half of March.

I don't have drone comb in all colonies for mating purposes, just in those I selected the summer before.  Any comb in colonies that were rejected for breeding is removed and frozen.  I prefer to have all of the drone cells on one frame so that it can be managed without searching all of the other combs.  It has been proven that reducing drone cells to 3% or less reduces the varroa mites rate of increase to the point treatments may not be required, at least not more than once a year.

[Ben Framed]

I usually have drone frames in the brood nest in October when I begin to feed for winter so that they may be filled with winter stores.  If for some reason I don't have them in the hive I make sure to put them in the first half of March.

I don't have drone comb in all colonies for mating purposes, just in those I selected the summer before.  Any comb in colonies that were rejected for breeding is removed and frozen.  I prefer to have all of the drone cells on one frame so that it can be managed without searching all of the other combs.  It has been proven that reducing drone cells to 3% or less reduces the varroa mites rate of increase to the point treatments may not be required, at least not more than once a year.

Thanks...

[Ben Framed]

Almost all information on Google search is posted in the interest of varroa control. My interest is drone increase.

[van from Arkansas]

Hi Mr. BenFramed.

I add green waxed out drone frame in March or April depending on temperatures.  The drone frames are only added to breeder quality hives.  Drone brood that is burr comb in support quality hives is removed, along with varroa as my neighbor ARbeekeeper texted.

Note:  last year, I added waxed out drone brood frame to a beautiful quality breeder queen hive.  The queen wasted no time and laid both sides of the green frame with drone eggs.  Just great I thought, now I have lots of breeder quality drones for breeding my queens...  Not so fast, as I discovered the queen was superseded.  Now the question remains:

1.  Was the queen superseded because she laid so much drone brood, in early Spring, the workers replaced her?   Workers want mostly workers in early Spring.

2.  Natural supersedure do to faulty queen although she was a good layer to me?

Van

[Ben Framed]

Hi Mr. BenFramed.

I add green waxed out drone frame in March or April depending on temperatures.  The drone frames are only added to breeder quality hives.  Drone brood that is burr comb in support quality hives is removed, along with varroa as my neighbor ARbeekeeper texted.

Note:  last year, I added waxed out drone brood frame to a beautiful quality breeder queen hive.  The queen wasted no time and laid both sides of the green frame with drone eggs.  Just great I thought, now I have lots of breeder quality drones for breeding my queens...  Not so fast, as I discovered the queen was superseded.  Now the question remains:

1.  Was the queen superseded because she laid so much drone brood, in early Spring, the workers replaced her?   Workers want mostly workers in early Spring.

2.  Natural supersedure do to faulty queen although she was a good layer to me?

Van

Mr Van you brought up some very interesting and good points.

>Just great I thought, now I have lots of breeder quality drones for breeding my queens...

I was thinking the same as you as I was reading. Then I read the rest. Your observation and perception on this matter is outstanding. I feel I am in the classroom!

Hopefully we will be hearing more thoughts and ideas of you comment from yourself as well as others here. I look forward to each ones ideas and discussion!

CLASS IS OPEN......     lol
Thank you Mr Van for your comments as well as the previous comments from AR Beekeeper and sawdstmakr.....

[BeeMaster2]

Ben,
Keep in mind, raising drones in your apiary only helps beekeepers a good ways away from your apiary. I know of a couple of queen breeders that give queens away to their neighbors. They select the hives that they want the drones from and these are the ones they give to their neighbors.
Other queen breeders place drone hives in several directions about a mile from their breeder queens.
Jim Altmiller

[Ben Framed]

Ben,
Keep in mind, raising drones in your apiary only helps beekeepers a good ways away from your apiary. I know of a couple of queen breeders that give queens away to their neighbors. They select the hives that they want the drones from and these are the ones they give to their neighbors.
Other queen breeders place drone hives in several directions about a mile from their breeder queens.
Jim Altmiller

Thanks Jim, all good points! I am doing that which goes right along with your points. I have two yards. Each pretty much equal in strength, hive wise. I will be gathering my grafts from one yard and placing the mating boxes a quarter mile from the other, (drone), yard. I feel fortunate to be in this position. I also feel fortunate to have some really gentle bees as well as good producers! They are hardy to boot! They are a mixture of Barnyard bees stock and cut out stock which I removed myself from homes etc. They come in different colors, from an almost blond color to sometimes a dark color. These bees survive well, (so far) lol. My third winter and my fourth spring coming! I suppose I could call them Bens Mutts lol.




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[TheHoneyPump]

Start the drones a month before starting the queens. Put the drone cell frame in 30 to 40 days BEFORE your first grafting of queen larvae.  Feed those drone mother hives with copious amounts of protein, pollen sub. The bees will not produce drones unless they are feeling flush with resources. The queen may lay in the drone frame and larvae starts, but the bees will go back and canibalize most of the drone if they feel the slightest bit resource strain.

What I do is then wait until the drone brood is capped and maturing. When it is about 1 week from emerging I go pull the drone frames out of the hives and consolidate all of the drone brood into one or two queenless colonies, labelled The Barracks. The drones emerge into those hives only.  I can then keep tabs on and treat only The Barracks for mite if there are any issues. When the drones sexually mature and start flying, they redistribute themselves amongst the other nearby hives in the apiary, as well as entering and loitering in the mating nucs.

Location of the hives and nucs does not matter. Nature sorts itself out. My drone hives, The Barracks, are setup in the same yard area as the mating yard.  Perhaps 1/8 to 1/4 mile between them at most. Never had a concerning problem, having had many many great successes.

It is really as simple as that.  Not sure what else can possibly say or offer about this.

Hope that helps.

[Ben Framed]

Start the drones a month before starting the queens. Put the drone cell frame in 30 to 40 days BEFORE your first grafting of queen larvae.  Feed those drone mother hives with copious amounts of protein, pollen sub. The bees will not produce drones unless they are feeling flush with resources. The queen may lay in the drone frame and larvae starts, but the bees will go back and canibalize most of the drone if they feel the slightest bit resource strain.

What I do is then wait until the drone brood is capped and maturing. When it is about 1 week from emerging I go pull the drone frames out of the hives and consolidate all of the drone brood into one or two queenless colonies, labelled The Barracks. The drones emerge into those hives only.  I can then keep tabs on and treat only The Barracks for mite if there are any issues. When the drones sexually mature and start flying, they redistribute themselves amongst the other nearby hives in the apiary, as well as entering and loitering in the mating nucs.

Location of the hives and nucs does not matter. Nature sorts itself out. My drone hives, The Barracks, are setup in the same yard area as the mating yard.  Perhaps 1/8 to 1/4 mile between them at most. Never had a concerning problem, having had many many great successes.

It is really as simple as that.  Not sure what else can possibly say or offer about this.

Hope that helps.

>"Hope that helps."
 
Immensely!!  This will be another topic for my printer priority and files!!
Thanks for sharing this valuable information.

[TheHoneyPump]

PS:   I missed part of the early question about foundation. 
Use drawn drone combs only.  They will not build comb and raise drones at same time in same cycle. 
Year -1 ;  place drone comb foundation in honey supers, above a queen excluder, during heavy nectar flows.  The bees draw them out and pack with honey.  Extract the honey and store the drawn comb. 
Year 0 ; the next spring place the drawn drone combs in your selected drone mother hives.

And finally, just like your queen cell starter and finisher colonies need to be flush with bees, young bees, same is true of the drone mother hives.  Ot takes a tremendous amount of resources and nurse bees to fill up a frame full of capped drone brood.  Pack/condense the mother  hives ensuring lots of young bees. 

[TheHoneyPump]

Hi Mr. BenFramed.

<>
.  The queen wasted no time and laid both sides of the green frame with drone eggs.  Just great I thought, now I have lots of breeder quality drones for breeding my queens...  Not so fast, as I discovered the queen was superseded.  Now the question remains:

1.  Was the queen superseded because she laid so much drone brood, in early Spring, the workers replaced her?   Workers want mostly workers in early Spring.

2.  Natural supersedure do to faulty queen although she was a good layer to me?

Van

Great observation. I offer my thoughts ...
The bees prerequisite to swarm season, natural queen cells instinct is the presence of drones and resources.  If keen, you will notice there are few or rare swarm cells or supercedure attempts really early in the season (or really late) when there are hardly any drones in the hives.  When you are seeing lots of drones in there, queen cells start popping out frequently.

By putting in these drone combs that can each have upwards of 6000 drone cells on the go, and adding supplement feed; it should be reasonable to think that these frames and resources could overstimulate those instincts.  I seem to have staved this off by the method of moving the capped drone combs over to separate hives setup just for drones.  If the combs were left in the drone mother hive, I would not be surprised at all if thousands of emerging drones would trigger her bees to ready swarm preps or supersede.
A noticeable level of drones on a hive is healthy and stable.  (5 to 15 %).  An abrupt overload of drones from these green frames bursting likely throws them off balance and into seemingly unexpected queen rearing.  Or, after these comments for consideration - is it actually happening as should be expected by the beekeeper?

? ? ?

[Beeboy01]

As a hobbyist bee keeper who doesn't actively use green drone frames my observations might not be as sharp as those who run drone frames for queen raising and mite control but over the years I've come to notice that the location of the drone brood seems to be an indication of whether the hive will move into swarm mode or not. It's been my opinion from what I have seen that if the hive has a lot of drone brood in the center of the brood box it tends to swarm while with drone brood along the outside of the brood the hive tends to swarm less.
   It's a little like the chicken or egg, does a failing queen lay drones in the middle of the brood nest because that's all she has left or does the presence of open drone cells trigger her to lay in them. 
  HP, your comment about how much resources are needed to raise drones is a very good point and reminds me of another thread about whether swarm cells are better than supersede cells since swarm cells are developed when the hive is strong with good resources. I would think the same caveat would hold for drones.