Foundationless = all drones?

There is unfortunately a smidgeon of truth in that. F2 aggression is common in the uk where people keep Carniolan and Hybrid Buckfast. These do not mix with our native bee.
What is your native bee in Germany?

None. It used to be apis mellifera mellifera, the Dark or Northern bee. When the Carnica was introduced to germany, the native bee was planfully and willingly eradicated. Officials wanted to make the new breed the only one, anything wild and native was considered inferior and thus subject to total extinction those days. There is, however, a group/association with the goal to reimport and restore the Northern bee by importing bees from remote areas in e.g. norway. But since the Northern bee willingly crosses with other breeds like Carnica and Buckfast, itā€™s not easy to keep them purebred. But all breeds are selected by calmness and their crossbred offspring donā€™t fall back in behaviour. At least thatā€™s what the mellifera people state on their websiteā€¦

http://www.nordbiene.de/die-dunkle-biene-apis-mellifera-mellifera-schwarze-braune-biene-landbiene-heidebiene-waldbiene.html

I myself had in mind to use the Northern bee, I bought the E-Book, but now I got started with ā€œnormalā€ Carnica bees. They might well have a certain Buckfast percentage thoughā€¦

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Hi I thought Iā€™d add a photo from my hive after a recent inspection. I would have estimated that 40% of my brood was drones. I have only used foundationless frames with about 100mm or 4 inches of starter foundation. I had opinion that the bees will be happier building what they want. When doing hive checks this frame was never drones only. On finding so many drone cells within the hive I was given advice to remove at least this frame. The thought process is that when this brood hatches the queen will continue to lay drones upon finding the empty cell. There is still plenty of drone cells within the brood box maybe 20% now. In an 8 frame box with 2 frames of honey on the edges, a frame full of drones seemed excessive.

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Looks like you have a queen laying only dronesā€¦a drone layer. You would have to replace her
What is the rest of the most recent brood like?

There is capped brood and eggs on the other frames for worker bees. I am confused as to why I would have to replace the queen. I am new to bee keeping but my understanding is that the queen lays either a fertilised (worker bee) or unfertilised(drone) egg depending on the cell size. The bees will make the cells bee or drone according to what they want and the queen lays accordingly. So the bees dictate to queen what to lay through the cells. Is this correct? It was based on this that I just replace the frame and let the bees start from scratch. I would be interested to hear if this is right. Thanks

As queens age they use up sperm. If they were not well-mated, or they are very old, they can even run out of sperm. They need sperm to lay worker bees, whereas drones can be made without sperm. I think @Dee was just thinking of the possibility that you had a drone-laying queen which canā€™t lay any workers. If you have normal worker brood too, then that is not the case, and you donā€™t need to worry if your worker brood pattern is good.

You can certainly do that. You can also freeze the frame for 24 to 48 hours, then put it back. The bees will recycle the protein from the drones. If you put it at the outer edge of the hive on the north side (in the northern hemisphere, otherwise south side :blush: ) they will probably reuse it to store honey.

Which is why I asked what the rest of the brood was like.
I have never seen drones laid like that in a normal hive.

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Exactly. However, in one of our hives this year, I put in a frame of wax-coated plastic foundation. I have never used it before. It was standard worker cell size, not drone foundation. The bees immediately drew a large circle of drone comb on it, confluent and occupying the center of about 1/3 of the foundation. Very interesting! :wink: The other side was all normal brood, so I didnā€™t panic. :smile:

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For curiosity sake I opened up my hive today. One week ago I took that frame of drone cells out and replaced it with a foundationless frame along with two others as part of my swarm management. Today it was all good news. All three frames were 60-70% draw wax with the queen already laying in these frames. I can also say that they are foundationless frames with only a small percentage of drone cells on the edges of the frame. Whether this disproves the idea that foundationless will only give you drones. I donā€™t know. It doesnā€™t appear that way at the moment in my spring time hive. Sorry forgot to take photos. Was trying to be as quick and unintrusive as possible.

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Thatā€™s great, can you take some pics next time please?