# Drone frames - the green ones - New beekeeper - Long Island, NY



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Are you also a new beekeeper starting a hive this year?

If so, I would add the drone frame a few weeks after you hived the bees. They will probably make worker bees, first - and you want them to - as you need to get enough worker bees going to tend brood, make wax and forage. It's quite a scramble to get it all done the first year.

Although your bees will likely come not completely free of mites, they should be at a very low level. Monitor using sticky boards and sugar shakes starting as soon as you can after they are solidly established in your new hive. Their likely relative freedom from mites early on allows you to wait to add the drone trap frames without risk. Next spring you will want to have those drone combs in much earlier.

Drone trapping sounds like a completely benign thing for a colony, but I think it is not entirely so. Drones undoubtedly have a strong role in the overall healthy workings of a hive and the bees will keep on making them as fast as you can pull them out. Drone trapping will also only damp down the mites, not eradicate them, so you will need a rigorous monitoring program to stay on top of things. Don't assume it's working well enough- particularly towards the end of the summer - even if you have been faithfully extracting a drone comb every 21 or 22 days, without fail.

It is very helpful to have two green combs per hive so you can remove one and install a fresh one in the same hive opening.

Enj.


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## Westhill (Jul 26, 2012)

Hi Bob,
I will let the more experienced beeks (like Enjambres) answer your question since I'm just starting my second year, but I wanted to say Welcome to beekeeping! from another Long Islander. Hope you have a great first season!


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## BMoire (Feb 2, 2016)

Thanks to both.
I'm a new beek but have had the hive since October. So they are established. The hive was re-queened last September before I got it. My queen, Natasha, is Russian. 
I am planning to rotate, swapping 2 drone frames.
I have 2 deeps and intend to use mediums above. Would the drone frame be better in the lower or upper deep?


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

Killing whole frames of drones to reduce mites is a huge waste of hive resources. The bees will make frame after frame of drones until the summer dearth, they really want about 15% drones in the hive and will keep trying no matter what you do. Think of it this way -- each comb of drones is the resources needed to make about a comb of workers. You wouldn't pull frames of worker bees to control mites, or at least I wouldn't

I use drone comb (by putting foundationless frames in rather than green plastic) to keep drones out of the rest of the brood nest. A couple medium frames of all drones (and they are wall to wall!) and the bees are happy and I don't have drone comb all over.

For mites I use formic acid pads (Mite Away Quick Strips). Very nasty, a pain to use, but I brought all my hives and half my brother's through (and all of a friends 10 hives) with very few mites and very healthy buildup. One treatment in August seems to work well for me, at least so far. Very good buildup this spring, almost too much in one hive.

Oxalic acid vapor works well too, with minimal disruption to the hive.

Apilife Var also seem to work for some club members (it's thymol, so you have to take the honey off).

Any of those treatments will work vastly better than killing frame after frame of drones and missing 3/4 of the mites every time. 

Peter


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I have some of the same concerns, as Peter, about the effects (and consequences) of continual drone trapping. 

It seems like such a benign thing to do, and yet I think that it's likely to be highly disruptive to the bees, and certainly wastes the hive's brood resources. My bees seem to produce a good crop of drones in a push around the time of good queen mating-weather, and then they keep producing them, but at a much smaller quantity for the rest of the season. I think that if you keep artificially removing (before hatching) successive flushes of drone brood, you will wind up forcing them to keep laying full frames of drones all season long just to maintain some internal balance among the sexes within the hive. 

Drones probably have more, and perhaps very subtle, at least to humans, roles in the hive than we know.

I wouldn't hesitate to use a round of drone trapping in a heavily infested hive that was just coming into my care as means of getting the mite level down to more-tolerable levels. I would use it as one component of an IPM regimen, that included other kinds of treatments, too, particularly as an adjunct to something such as an, OAV-series which doesn't kill mites under cappings. But I don't think I'd want to base my primary mite-control strategy on repeated drone brood removals over the course of a full season.

I don't think it matters where the frame is as long as it is beside an area of active brood rearing. If you run two brood boxes, having it in the top one makes it easier for you to retrieve. And easy retrieval is critically important, delaying removal beyond the scheduled date will turn the frame into a mite factory.

I am glad you have named your queen. I do, too, although I know others ridicule me. So greetings to Natasha from Dahlia, Delphine, Baby Buttercup, Iris, Anthemis, Fern, Peony, and Juniper. 

Enj.


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## frustrateddrone (Jan 31, 2015)

Get a VHS Queen


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## Ravenseye (Apr 2, 2006)

I use the drone frames to help monitor mite load. I've long since given up using them as a PRIMARY mite control tool. While forcing a colony to raise drone brood might be wasteful in this example, I don't believe that it's crucial to the colony. For me, the use of green drone frames helps me understand the mite load while also reducing that load in some way. There are much lore efficient methods of killing mites after I assess their effect on the colony. Again, I no longer use the frames specifically to reduce mite populations but I find them informative for assessment purposes. If they're used as part of an IPM program, I'm all for it if they're useful.


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## kaizen (Mar 20, 2015)

don't bother. all of my hives filled them with honey last year. guess they didn't get the memo. I did pull a half frame of drones in the summer and pulled them all out looking for mites. pulled over 100 and saw none. then 2 months later that exact hive was lost in the first cold overnight. the tribe said it was mites. I started using oav contrary to what I was seeing and my hives rebounded unbelievably.


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## Kamon A. Reynolds (Apr 15, 2012)

They are best used on mature Colony coming out of winter. Having drawn drone frames is useful especially if you are raising drones for mating Queens. I personally like trapping for mites with drones. If you time it right it can knock-back the mites in early spring by a good margin. Not a cure-all but I like that it takes care of the mites without using a treatment they possibly could build and immunity 2. Placing frames in The Brood nest as soon as your queen start laying drones is the best time to use this IPM. Oxalic acid in the winter follow up with a drone frame or two and you have very low might levels


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## ToeOfDog (Sep 25, 2013)

Drone culling is my only form of mite control and works very well. Study mites then play with an Excel worksheet to learn about exponential growth of mites. How killing one mite in March is worth killing a unbelievable number in August.

March is usually the first month we have drone brood. Adjust your dates accordingly. You don't need green frames. Just use a foundationless frame with a wax starter strip. In March and April they will pull any foundationless frame as drone. It is best to put it in there in February before they start laying drone. Mine are in the number 3 and number 8 position, lower box. 

You can pull the drone frame anytime after it is capped which is the 10th or 11th day (memory failure <G>). After you pull them stick them in the freezer for a couple days. The reason to leave them in the hive longer is that more mature pupae are easier to extract after freezing than the early pupae. 

Cull at the very beginning of the season (March for me). At the second culling pull 100 pupae per and check for mites. If none, do a third culling and quit for the summer. 

Drone culling works much better with small cell than large cell beekeeping.


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## Outdoor N8 (Aug 7, 2015)

This year I pulled all my green drone frames, I consider them a waste of resources. i'm loosing potentially 8 thousand workers every brood cycle, think about that.

Instead, after seeing "Laurie's frames", i'm doing half foundation pannels in the middle of the frame and letting the bees decide on what type of comb they want to build. Yup, it was drones. However, I am convinced that removing capped drone brood is a good IPM management tool. So, now i'm just removing one side (half) of the drones and am doing mite checks in them.

A different take for your consideration.


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## ToeOfDog (Sep 25, 2013)

Outdoor N8:

Life is a series of trade offs. Drone culling is a practice for those that do not want to use pesticides. There maybe a decrease in the amount of worker brood that is raised but that is an acceptable risk. 

If you drone cull in March and April this takes advantage of the natural urge of the hive to make drones in the spring. Are resources really wasted if they will make them anyway?

There is another consideration. When you apply a pesticide to your hive, is there any negative consequences to the health of your colony?


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Not quite to the point of having resources to waste on raising drone brood to kill. May dabble in it some. There are beeks around here that do the green frames and freeze them. They seem to do well so it's a good tool.


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## funwithbees (Mar 27, 2010)

Dr. Calderone at Cornell did a study a few years ago to determine the efficiency of drone frame removal. Mites were at low levels till august ,then the levels were the same as the control colonies. 
Maybe Rader can find a link to the study. I listened to his presentation as an ESHPA meeting. His conclusion was it was a waste of tome and resources.:lookout:
Nick
gridleyhollow.com


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

Are resources wasted if they are going to make them anyway? Yes if you cause them to try three times instead of once. My hives typically make a large crop of drones once in the spring and again after swarms, then just a scattering the rest of the year with a larger batch in the fall when the fall flow starts. Six deep frames of brood wasted is a LOT of bees, and killing drone brood in the spring will do squat for reducing mite loads in late summer when they do all the actual damage to the hive.

Do what you will, but I don't think freezing drone brood is all that effective in controlling fall mite problems.

Peter


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

>> Dr. Calderone at Cornell did a study a few years ago to determine the efficiency of drone frame removal. 

Perhaps this is what you are referring to ... ?
http://www.three-peaks.net/PDF/Drone Brood Removal for the Management of Varroa destructor.pdf


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## bean tree homestead (Nov 18, 2013)

French study: Efficacy of drone trapping four times in a season. Kept mite levels substantially (25%) lower, but still needed additional control measures. Honey production did not suffer as a result of trapping. Unexpected result was control of swarming!

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/fighting-varroa-biotechnical-tactics-ii/


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