I recently saw drone brood frames as one tool to manage varroa in the Flowhive. The beekeeper had the drone frames in the super which I found odd as I would have expected them in the brood box. Any thoughts?
Hi Judy, welcome to the forum. Definitely in the brood box where the queen can lay eggs in. The only reason to put them in the honey super would be if he removed the QE. By doing that he’ll also get eggs in the flow frames which would be highly undesirable.
Maybe he put them up there for safe keeping until he was ready to put them into the brood box.
Great. That’s what I thought.
We have varroa arriving on our doorstep so trying to be prepared.
Judy
I attended a varroa workshop on the weekend up on the Sunshine Coast. It’s all very worrying. I think that if I can’t control varroa without chemicals, I’ll give up beekeeping. Instead of those special frames, I’ll just use foundationless frames, then destroy whatever the bees produce every 20 days.
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Jeff, I hope you don’t throw in the towel. Varroa is another pest to deal with, but with decades of knowledge from around the world we can get through it. The breeders are working on genetics to keep mite levels below threshold. It’ll take time.
In the meantime, keep adding to what you learned at the workshop. Non-chemical methods can work, but are labour intensive. I don’t stop at drone removal. I take frames of capped workers too. In high growth times, there’s plenty to spare with a side benefit of effective swarm management.
You’ll have losses. I sure have. The chemical free way is hard. I’m using hyperthermia with success, but if I must I’ll add oxalic acid and formic acid to my arsenal. There are safe, effective options that we may never see registered. I’ll keep lobbying government to change the APVMA legislation to allow us to use unregistered proven methods on our bees just as the kiwis did 13 years ago.
We need experienced beekeepers like you to adapt and to keep passing on your knowledge to the next generation of beekeepers.
Mike
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Judy, the green frames for the drone removal technique belongs in the brood box, but they’re also excellent for honey production.
For drone removal as a mite control method, I find placing one or two ideals in the brood box better. The bees draw out drone comb beneath the bottom bar. It takes less time to do and the queen is more likely to lay it out. When it’s time to remove the capped drones, just slice the comb off with your hive tool and return the frame for a repeat cycle.
That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard or thought of that. Great. I’ll give that a go when the time arrives.
Here in Germany we have our share of Varroa treatment experiences. The method we call “cutting drone frames” is an important part of keeping them in check over the year.
It’s basically what @JeffH describes: Give the bees a foundationless frame to build drone cells, wait for them to cap the guys (14-21 days) and then replace the frame with an empty one.
For some reason Varroa seem to prefer to move into drone cells, so a big portion of them will be regularly removed this way.
You can easily cut them out of the foundationless frame and reuse that for the next rotation.
I usually freeze them for a few days after to kill everything, but other beekeepers also feed the drone brood to neighbour’s chicken.
When I started doing that, I felt bad for all the work the girls put in there and for killing the guys, but it is an effective method to keep the Varroa numbers down which is essential for the colony. It also gives the bees some extra work to rebuild the frame which might help with swarm prevention too.
At the end of the year we do formic acid treatment after the last harvest (because it works into brood cells) and oxalic acid once the queen stopped laying eggs (does not work into brood cells) as a “final treatment” before winter. For a year or two we can also vaporize the OA using heat. It requires proper personal protection equipment but works well.
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Thanks for all of that.
I’ve been to several Varroa workshops here in Australia but I think we will only get a handle on it when we have to actually have to do the work.
I’ve got some drone frames ready to go and I also have some ideal frames. I’m willing to try anything to slow the initial explosion of the mite on arrival.
We now have varroa reporting in close proximity. Do you think it reasonable to put in drone frames now even though I haven’t seen any varroa on testing? Or should I wait until I definitely have seen varroa?
It is high summer here and still HOT.
Where I am located we don’t really get a brood break, although the queen does slow down a bit. Winter night temperatures rarely go below 10 degreesC.