Hi Dexter, You probably got me wrong, what I’m saying is “cut the drone comb out before putting the frame above the QX”. What your putting above the QX is the frame of brood minus the drone comb you cut out. I’m talking about frames that contained large sections of drone comb. Therefore the bees will have a large gap to repair, that’s why I say not to put those large gaps side by side, the bees will most likely build bridging comb. You can use those frames for honey production. I just keep good frames in the brood. Frames that are mostly worker comb. Small pockets of drone comb on the corners is fine. In that Nova video, they say that a strong colony has around a hundred drones. Even with my strategy, my hives have a whole lot more than that.
The whole purpose of the Flow hive was predicated on “better for the bees” Now we’re butchering all the male babies lol?
I just give them the brood nest they naturally desire (here in NJ it’s 3 deep 8 frame boxes) with honey supers above. Inspect every 7 to 10 days in the height of the season (mid-March through mid July here).
Thanks Jeff.
Ok so I know his is going off topic however I must ask the obvious question.
What causes excessive drone brood?
@skeggley queens lay drones when they are needed - personally I don’t think you can have an excess of drones - we need the drones for diversity.
Some kill drone larvae to look for Varroa. it is one way to manage the Varroa.
Some worry that the hive is getting ready to swarm.
If the weather is nice Drones are needed to fly with Virgin queens, all the diversity of breeding is in the drones.
Drones are known to fly between 2pm and 4:30pm on warm days for mating flights.
Drone gather in areas on the edges of trees where they wait for Virgins to arrive “Drone Mating Area”
My bees were short on forage and threw all the drones out
Valli is right, a healthy hive will make the drones it needs. At the height of summer drones will make up 10-15% of the population and this is normal.
Drone culling is a recognised way to reduce varroa, typically by getting the bees to make extra drones on a short frame then removing them when they are capped.
Drone Congregation Areas (DCAs) are however not near trees;they are out in the open and in areas of relative calm. They tend to be in the same place every year for some reason not very well understood( Few drones survive the winter so how do new drones fly to the same place?)
Drones are usually ejected before the colony settles in for the winter though I usually find a few survivors in the spring.
Hi Greg, Bees don’t make excessive drones in the wild, they make as many drones as they can without compromising the hive. I explained this earlier. Each hive wants to pass on it’s genes. The more drones it makes, the more chances it has of achieving this. For example: If you have hiveA & hiveB, & there’s a virgin queen in the area, hiveA wants it’s drones to mate with that v.queen & vice versa. In the wild, the bees make more drones then we actually need. It must be remembered that most of the people in this forum are using bought queens that are already mated with drones from a different area. People should also take a look at the Flow Brood Inspection video to see how much drone comb is on their brood frames. Again, I’ll add my disclaimer: I’m only stating what works for me. What other beekeepers do is up to them. I let my hives make new queens via natural selection, the strength of my colonies is testament to the strength & diversity of the drones in my area. Lots of people like the idea of purchasing queens that are propagated from fertile eggs that are randomly chosen (not naturally selected) & then allow their hives to make excessive drones. Then as soon as something goes wrong, order in a new queen. If people on this forum like the idea of allowing their hives to make as many drones as they like, they should couple that with only using naturally selected queens.