Stimulating drone rearing

[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.

[TheHoneyPump]

Thanks for all the replies.

Of course now being the end of June there are quite a few drones showing up on walking around on the frames.

I would like to see the drones alot earlier in the season. What are the drivers that stimulate the raising of drones and how to exploiting those?  Intent is to get more drones earlier in the spring.  If I can understand what causes the bees to make drones or not make drones, there may be something I can do to encourage them.

I do use the green drone frames, DF.  What I observed, early season, is they would start out laying on the DF, say 50% of the frame.  Some larvae would be mostly developed 5 days later.  A week later, I may find the DF has been cleaned out and there is only 5% of the cells still with drones in them and capped.   Cause?   What am I missing?
The colonies, at the time, were good reasonably strong ones.  2 deep 10 frame brood boxes with at least 15 frames of bees in there and 8+ frames of regular brood with plenty of stores and supplemental pollen patties.

[beepro]

If you have the hive resources then divide it into 2 bee yards, one for making nuc hives and the other for production hives.   The nuc hives will issue drones much earlier than the production hives at Spring hive expansion time.   This is due to the fact that nuc hives grow much faster than the regular deep hives.

Make 3 level deep hives to encourage them to make more drones.  Also, get rid of the mites during the winter time.  If not they will infect the drone broods first.  That is why you saw they wipe out the drone cells and started it again.  Might be mite infection causing them to clear out the drone broods.  To get good healthy drones the mites must be under control!

[BeeMaster2]

THP,
Being in Canada and trying to make spring drones is hard to do. When do your temps stay in the 60s?
Most of the big queen breeders are in Florida and Georgia due to the temps for raising queens. Michael Bush raises queens in Nebraska. I will check his schedule to see how early he starts making queens ands drones.
Jim

[BeeMaster2]

I checked his schedule. May 6-12 is His spring work week and 13-19 is his spring camp. I believe he starts making drones around the 6th and queens the following week. Hopefully Michael will chime in and provide more information.
Jim

[TheHoneyPump]

Have snow on the ground here into end of March, sometimes as long as into third week of April. When it does change season it does so fast. Timing is everything.  A week of heat wave end of April, a couple of days of snow in May, next heat wave (27-30 deg C) mid May.  June which is usually wet; sunny in the morning and thunderstorms in afternoon and evening every day for 2-3 weeks straight.  July/August are nice (usually) 22 - 28 deg C.  "April showers bring may flowers" .... ummm no way, not here.  "June showers bring July flowers".  First frost is August 25ish.

Knowing from experience the early season annual weather pattern here ... As an experiment I started my first early queens this year really early, around April 14.  The hives were still winter wrapped.  Still 2 feet of snow on the ground.  +6 C days, -6 C nights. It was fairly successful.  The logic and the golly guess timing aligned right on the first heat wave at end of April and 1st week of May.  The heat wave hit, queens bees and drones filled the skies.  Got the Q's mated very quickly just fine.  Problem then was after that the hives were bare of drones so the next batch of queens failed to find enough mates.  They lingered and over half of them never did mate at all.  If I can figure out how to get the bees to bulk up on drones sooner then the early queen rearing could be a more plausible reality here and should be able to yield higher number of queens.  I have to get them done early because June is usually wet and a write off, as said.  In a bit of a contrast June is also the time of population explosion: aka swarming season here.  It is the time for apiary loss recovery and increases, splits. Need to have queens ready ahead of time. April/May queens is possible if there can be more drones. 

I get the mite comment and hive health concerns. I do not believe that to be the problem. Hives were and are strong and healthy with mite counts of 0 to 1 per 300 since first checks in March. By alcohol wash method.  If they were not healthy, it would not have been possible to have taken 4 full splits off of each of them (using the May queens) throughout month of June.  each 1 hive in May is = 4 hive now.

It is all about the drones, much as we love'em for colony balance and mating queens, or hate'em as loitering honey sucking mite traps or whatever.  They are the key to this golden locket.

[beepro]

Then you have to do a better job at overwintering your hives.   You might have to consider buying mated queens from other
breeders to triple your hive numbers for next season's drones production.   Since your window of opportunity is shorter, increasing hive
numbers are your only option that I see.   More healthy overwintered hives, more drones produced.    Try 100 hives at the minimum going to 300 per
season!      No more drones worry after that.