No Jeff, it’s not you I’ve been thinking about at all.
I heard of beekeepers culling dronebrood on a grand scale because drone brood is preferred by varroa mums for the best chance of surviving babies, because the drone breeding cycle is just right for varroa.
I heard those stories at apimondia, talking to a lot of beekeepers. It’s part of varroa management for some.
But sure, if everybody keeps advising to kill drones for all sorts of reasons, not really knowing what else drones are good for in a hive, something will suffer.
Anyway, instead of adding a second broodbox, letting the bees have drones in the broodbox in spring would prevent the big nectarless arc in the super. It just requires management of the brood, which is easy enough with just one broodbox.
A second broodbox would add a lot of more work in my opinion, especially since many frames will be just honey. Heavy lifting.
Finding the queen if you need to in 2 boxes is not an easy task.
Beekeeping advice is so regional. When it’s cold, like getting near freezing, here it is advised to have 2 broodboxes over winter. Then in Canada, I visited a commercial beekeeping operation that gets below -30C, and they overwinter successfully in one broodbox. They were just wintering down when we met them. They have a certain feeding regime to feed up for winter bees in the one box and that’s it.
So you can’t even generalize that in cold areas you need 2 broodboxes.
Jeff, I always value your advice and take it into consideration. Where SHB management is concerned, you can’t get enough warning out there and I’m sure you made many people watch out.
Our major curse, varroa, isn’t even here yet.
Still, it is true only a few men are needed to impregnise millions of women, but what happens then with that offspring?
Thank for clearing that up Webber, also thanks for those kind words.
With the culling of drones in relation to Varroa management, it’s my belief that frames are used specifically for a colony to raise more drones, so they can be later destroyed along with the Varroa attached to them. Nobody would want, say 2 frames worth of drones in a hive while we’re also trying to deal with beetles.
Maybe the beekeepers are still allowing the usual number of drones to live, while at the same time culling the drones in those frames designed for that purpose.
And under my conditions I place one of these semi-foundation frames I’ve constructed on the very outside position in my single brood chambers. The bees build the bottom foundationless portion…the brood bait section and/or the varroa bait section (same thing but different benefits)…rapidly as perfect drone comb.
I must admit that I subscribed to that line of thinking for many years. Brood frames were meticulously culled…any showing patches of drone cells were melted down. But there was a good reason…under our conditions we used this culling technique to reduce any swarming tendency…the thinking then was that the hive was being kept off balance with a drone deficiency.
Today my brood frames are still selected for pure worker cells (for most of the season the queen has only a single brood chamber…i.e. 10 frame Langstroth box with only 9 frames) and the brood/varroa bait frames (above photo) are inserted after the first honey pull and left there until the second honey pull. The bait frames are then moved up above the queen excluder and left there for the rest of the season…upper entrance provided for hatching drone escape. This installation of the bait frame has two advantages:
Our bees always confine the queen too much by storing pollen and honey on the outer 2 frames of the brood box so when we place the bait frame on the extremity of the brood nest it has the effect of stretching the brood nest horizontally…they are desperate to utilize potentail drone laying areas. Here is a photo of my predicament showing far too much feed in the immediate vicinity of the brood nest…small patch of brood top center.
The single brood/varroa bait frame appears to satisfy the space requirements for a colony so the bees don’t build drone cells on the bottom edge of the other brood frames…the bottom bar of the frames remains visible like the above photo. This is important for me because when removing brood frames for inspection, I’ve too often rolled queens (destroyed accidentally) when those bottom bars were build-out with drone comb. To this day, I still scrape drone cells off those bottom bars.
Good question Jeff…and if you ask me down the road the answer may vary.
To this point I leave the drone brood in the hive…trying to satisfy… what I’m becoming to believe…the hive’s inherent needs for drones at certain times in the season.
But when you use biological control of the varroa mite, removing that capped section of drone brood from the hive and disposing of it is an option…don’t have any chooks…but I’m sure a bear would thank me.
It takes quite a few seasons to “get the feel” of what treatments are actually working when dealing with varroa…and I’m still in that learning stage. One of the most significant things I’ve done to show varroa infestation levels…and it was by sheer coincidence…was to lay down a light colored linoleum on the floors of my beehouses. Bottom boards are screened.
I can see immediately when varroa numbers are starting to climb. If you look closely, you can see the dead mites and shreds of blue shop towel (oxalic acid impregnated blue shop towels are placed on top of the queen excluder during the summer to hold the mite population from skyrocketing). This fall when I moved the hives into their winter quarters, the hive in the photo was the only one of 9 powerful honey producers that showed any mites…and that is because I used it as a “brood tower” when shaking bulk bees.
The reason why I’m rambling on about varroa control is if my parasite management starts to fail, I still have those drone frames in my tool chest to use for biological control…thus changing what I do with the capped drone brood frames as per your question.
Thanks for explaining that Doug, that’s a great idea for getting the drones confined to one area of the brood. Hive beetles would restrict me from adopting that strategy. I might get away with it as a varroa strategy by removing it before the drones emerge.
Jeff…could you elaborate on the relationship of hive beetles and capped drone brood? Just like you don’t have the varroa mite in Australia, in this part of Canada we don’t have the hive beetle. Some experts here say that hive beetles need to lay their eggs in the ground and our lengthy frozen winter conditions destroy those eggs. Would like to hear about your experiences.
That is usually totally wrong (unless you bury slum gum in your garden)! They lay their eggs in a food source - a hive or rotting fruit. The larvae need to pupate in the soil, so freezing weather would kill the larvae, but the eggs would not be in the soil unless there was food there for them.
Hi Doug, exactly what @Dawn_SD said. The relationship between hive beetles & drone brood from my observations is: the drones don’t defend. Therefore recently emerged drones crowd the yet to be emerged drone brood, allowing beetles to lay eggs in it. The large numbers of recently emerged drones make it difficult for workers to chase beetles to prevent them from laying eggs.
I have a new strategy, & a good one for burying slumgum, which earth worms as well as compost worms absolutely love. I have a 6hp Masport chipper/shredder now. I grow sugar cane for the juice as well as to make my own sugar cane mulch. I shred the slumgum while shredding sugar cane leaves & trash after juicing, along with other stuff that needs shredding. That greatly dilutes it, while at the same time enriching the mulch, however giving the beetles nothing substantial to lay eggs in. The strategy is working fantastically.
Hello Doug,
I am having similar issues. I have had several hives swarm this year despite having removed frames of honey coming into spring and adding foundation, and putting supers on to keep the bees busy. The other day I saw an identical hive with all pollen and honey just like the one you have pictured on the outside wall of a hive. That hive swarmed today ;-( Do you have issues with swarming as well?
I have been thinking of utilizing shallow boxes (we call them ideals in Australia) to extend the brood to a box and a half early in spring- by putting the ideal box underneath the brood. The idea is it will give the queen extra space to lay, provide a good spot to put drones, allow the hive to really build up while hopefully avoiding swarming. Then later int he season we would move that box from below the brood to above the QX- allow the brood to hatch, release the drones and let the ideal fill with honey. Then we would remove all other honey boxes before winter and leave the ideal without any QX on top of the brood as winter stores. Next spring we would move it down again- and start the process over. What do you think of that idea? Our bees don’t need much in the way of winter stores as they forage throughout. All of this will require more work and I am not sure if it will stop swarming. If not we just have to make more and bigger splits early in spring.
Hi Jack, I frequently see similar frames that are pollen bound. I remove them to render the wax & turn the pollen into slumgum.
If you are removing frames from the brood to prevent a colony from preparing to swarm, I think the #1 tip would be to remove those brood frames that are full of sealed brood. Sometimes there will be 4 such frames in the brood box. Removing those frames is becoming to my mind, a no-brainer, the more I think about it. That might be the main contributor to my success in preventing my colonies from swarming.
Managing the brood in such a manner, including removing frames that are pollen bound will negate the need for any additional brood boxes. Especially boxes that are not uniform in depth with the rest of your gear.
I just read you good advice to Jack about pollen bound frames, it seems to me, especially in the Spring, that bees don’t know when there is enough pollen for their needs plus some to spare, seems when there is pollen about the bees are addicted to foraging on it.
Second time to the Sunshine Beach hive yesterday to sort it out. A Flow Hive with foundationless brood frames. About 15% of the bees were drones so I took 2 frames that was all drone sized cells and put in two frames with foundation then cycle out the rest over a month or so. I’ve never seen a colony with so many drones. Found and marked the queen for the people. They are feeling so much more confident having someone explain what they are seeing in their own hive, and now thinking of a second hive.
Got over 50mm of rain this past week and looking good up here, The bees are working a knee high heath area near my apiary like crazy now that a month ago was flowering but ignored by the bees, my guess is that there was a lack of nectar in the flowers prior to the rain.
Cheers mate
Hi Peter, well done. I’m not good with emoji’s, if I was I’d bring up a cup of black coffee, as well as well earned applause.
We got similar rain, not to mention a deluge early this morning. They got around a hundred mm at Bli Bli. I reckon we must have got something similar. I had some bee work to do this morning, I’ll put that off for a bit. Mainly because I want to move one hive away & let a lot of the bees move into a weaker hive. After all this rain, there might be a bit of fighting, which will be more harm than good.
cheers
Hi Jeff, my problem is I can’t bring myself to destroy beautiful frames of brood. But I do understand your thinking. I have been seeing frames of capped brood wall to wall this spring- full frames completely covered. And I have seen exactly how a hive will miss the early best spring flow if it swarms. Currently I have several hives that are recovering while hives that didn’t swarm are already filling their first boxes with honey. Luckily I have had some luck selling hives so I will start making more splits from here in- big splits that remove up to half the brood frames. It has taken a while for the penny to drop- I have been hoping to coast the edge of swarming and keep hives as strong as I can- bit I see now that making a big split is often the best way to achieve that.
Hi Jack, sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind to the rest of the colony. It can bee a hard pill to swallow but it is easier if you know it will help the hive in the long run.
Cheers
Hi Jack, I’m definitely not talking about destroying those beautiful frames of sealed brood, especially if you can find a market for colonies.
It’s just when you do remove brood frames in an attempt to prevent swarming, choose the frames with the most sealed brood. That would include taking brood with bees in a split. Or if you remove brood frames minus bees, you would use those frames to bolster weaker colonies.
In a situation where one couldn’t find a market for colonies & didn’t want to expand his/her apiary, sadly the only option would be to find an alternative use for that brood. In that situation, foundationless frames would do the trick until the swarm season finishes. Something I had to do in the past during a strong swarm season.
Hi Jeff. That’s what I have been doing, replace capped broodframes with foundationless, if I really want to buy time. I use those broodframes, from 2 or 3 hives, to make up 7 or 8 frame nucs. Works all the time.
These nucs are ready for a super in a few weeks, depending on if I give them a mated queen or let them make their own.
I make sure the brood frames are totally covered in nurse bees. Learned a few tricks by now. Thanks to you and my siblings over in Europe.
They lay their eggs in a food source - a hive or rotting fruit. The larvae need to pupate in the soil, so freezing weather would kill the larvae, but the eggs would not be in the soil unless there was food there for them. 