BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS

Stimulating drone rearing

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TheHoneyPump:
Question for the group with regards to drones.  While I seem to have a reasonable handle on rearing the queens, I am often left feeling that I should also be doing something to get more of the big guys in the air around the apiaries for mating with those queens.  I put Pierco drone frames in the preferred hives.  They raise some, they remove a bunch, they raise a few more.  Obviously I am missing something.

There is quite alot of reference materials on rearing queens.  I am having difficulty finding much on drones. 
Therefore the questions are:
What are the tips, tricks, methods, drivers, etc that stimulate the raising of drones and how can we get better at exploiting those?
Do you have some good weblinks for more information on this?

BeeMaster2:
First, keep in mind if you are raising drones for your apiary, you need to place those hives at least a mile from your queen mating nucs.
The trick to getting bees to make drones is to have very strong hives.
Jim

moebees:
I put a green frame in each hive and the queens usually lay them full.  I don't do anything special.  Often they go ahead and raise more than that in some of the foundationless frames as well.  They love to make drones.

beepro:
To raise good quality drones you make a 5 level deep nuc hive.  Each deep nuc box will hold 5 frames only.
Then put QE over the bottom box confining the laying queen to the bottom box.   And then put 2 pollen frames on either side of
the bottom box follow by 2 frames for broods and 1 frame for the drones.    Set up 5 such hives and see how many drones you will
get per hive.

Michael Bush:
Each colony has a threshold for drones.  If you want a lot of drones from a select group of genetics, then take the drone combs out of those colonies and give them to the colonies that do not have the genetics you want.  Those colonies receiving the drones will raise less drones since they have some.  Those donor colonies now have less drones so they will raise more.  It's really the only way to increase the number of drones you want.

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