# Drone Comb for Saturation



## KevinR

I was curious about drone combs in breeder hives for saturating an area with good DNA.

What time of year do you put the comb in the hive, or do you leave drone comb in year round?

If I put the comb in the hive. Is it right to plan for 40 days roughly before you want to mate your queens?

Any help on managing the male half the gene pool would be great.

Thanks


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## Whitetail

Drone comb is really only useful for this purpose seasonally when the hive starts to produce drones. You can leave it in year round, but it will likely become a honey storage frame. You can move just off center in the broodnest a couple frames for them to use the honey, and again utilize for drone production.


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## KevinR

Thoughts on forcing bees to lay drones? I'm planning to mate quite a few queens this year and I want to make sure that I have enough drones floating around.


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## Whitetail

I don't know about "force." I would think of it more as "entice." Adding drone comb to your colonies would be the best way to increase the number of desirable drones in your mating apiary. Keep in mind the drones contribute a lot to the genetics displayed in the queens' broodnest. I wouldn't put drone comb in any hives I wouldn't feel comfortable grafting out of.


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## squarepeg

i decided to try some foundationless frames and drone traps (per randy oliver's design) in my broodnests this past spring.

they were put in from mid february to early march, just as the first rounds of brood were coming on.

even though there was no new white wax being drawn yet, the bees drew out these foundationless frames and drone traps.

interestingly, they drew out complete frames of drone comb, and the queens laid in them.

my plan for next spring is to introduce foundationless frames again when the brood rearing starts.

i am going to do mite counts, and cull the capped drone brood out of the hives with high counts, while leaving the drones in the hives with low counts.

my hope is to flood the dca with 'good' drones when it comes time for mating.

the hives with high counts will end up getting requeened.


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## AstroBee

I had a bunch of shallow frames donated to my operation and will place them into a deep box with desirable genetics. The bees will build drone comb below the shallow frame's bottom bar. I put two or three of these intermixed between full deep frames in my best colonies and it really helps with drone numbers. If desired, in the Fall you can run your hive tool across the bottom and discard drone brood when its no longer needed. I've tried the green plastic drone comb, but I've had mixed results getting it drawn out as pure drone comb. I now prefer the shallow frame in a deep box much better.


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## rweakley

This is one of the very reasons I do foundationless. I think beekeepers do themselves and fellow beekeepers a disservice when they artificially try to keep the drone numbers down using foundation. Most of the information I have seen on the topic of drones is that there is a certain level (I don't remember the %) of drones the bees want to have around and unless you have a drone laying queen, laying workers... The hive isn't going to raise a bunch over that level. So the point is go foundationless, move the drone comb to the outside positions, bees will use it for drones when they want drones and honey when they don't. Whose drones do you want out there affecting the genetics of the surrounding area? Yours? Joe sixpack? Africanized colony in a tree? Just allow them to raise what they want in your hives and you don't have to worry about "flooding" the area. Life is a trade off Better genetics for a little less honey (if that's really proven). I wonder what affect having the proper balance in the hive has on the bees motivation?


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## Oldtimer

What I do for drone production, my hive brood nests are all double deeps, using comb foundation. But each hive gets two wired but foundationless deep frames, which they fill with pure drone. I keep these frames on the outside edges of the box, so that if at some point the bees think they have enough drones and stop using them, there is not a broodless frame wasting resources in the middle of the broodnest. On the outside, they'll raise drones, but if they think they have enough they'll use it for nectar and pollen storage. Sometimes they'll raise drones flat out early in the season, then decide they have enough and use the drone comb for honey. Later in the season, the drone population drops and they unpack the honey and raise drones again. Using this method you can get a very high number of drones in a hive. These hives will actually use 3 full drone frames if I let them but two is enough for my purposes.

Far as getting good mating, it works. A recent example would be from last year at a site I wanted pure as possible carniolan mating. There were 51 mating nucs, and 12 hives used to produce honey and drones. The area was saturated with italian drones I could not previously mate carniolans. But once I set up the 12 carniolan drone production hives, the area became saturated with carniolan drones, I got very high carniolan mating the italian drones hardly got a look in. 

So it's obvious that when doing this you need to be careful to avoid inbreeding, the drone production hives should be from unrelated stock to the queens.

Another interesting thing is the amount of noise these hives make. They get very full of drones, and early afternoon when the drones go out, the air is just full of drones and the noise is amazing! Many many decibels more than a normal hive.

The other question in the origional post, to sexually mature at the correct time, the drones need to be a minimum of 2 weeks older than the queens you intend them to mate with. Older is better.


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## squarepeg

excellent post oldtimer. i had not thought about using different colonies for drones vs. queen cells.


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## Mbeck

This article has lots of good info.
Virgin colonies used to maintain high volume of desired drones.

http://www.broodnest.com/uploads/ii_drone_rearing.pdf


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## KevinR

Mbeck said:


> This article has lots of good info.
> Virgin colonies used to maintain high volume of desired drones.


MBeck, 

The article didn't show up.

Oldtimer, 

How can you "know" that the canies were the drones that were successfully mating? Short of DNA testing, I've always wondered around that.

I have russians, nwc, italians, ferals, VSH mutts, etc... Russian Queens are golden like italians, and I've had italians come out jet black...

But that's good news about the foundationless frames. I've used that in the past for mite reduction, I was just hoping to "entice" the queens to raise early queens for early breeding.

This is the first year that I'm going to really try my hand at queen raising at a significant level. I want to make sure that I produce the best queens that I can.


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## Mbeck

Sorry I didn't post it.


http://www.broodnest.com/uploads/ii_drone_rearing.pdf

Here is another good one

http://www.wicwas.com/document files/monthly articles/larryarticles2006/LarryJune2006.pdf[HR][/HR]


These two articles give lots of insight.


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## Oldtimer

KevinR said:


> Oldtimer,
> 
> How can you "know" that the canies were the drones that were successfully mating? Short of DNA testing, I've always wondered around that.


Good point, well in truth, I don't know.

Just, before I moved the carni drone breeders in my queens were clearly mating with italians because the offspring were not pure. After flooding the area with carni drones, the offspring from the queens were pure black.

So to me, I felt my strategy was working, but end of the day, there was no DNA test to prove it, I was just assuming.


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## KevinR

Oldtimer said:


> Good point, well in truth, I don't know.
> 
> Just, before I moved the carni drone breeders in my queens were clearly mating with italians because the offspring were not pure. After flooding the area with carni drones, the offspring from the queens were pure black.
> 
> So to me, I felt my strategy was working, but end of the day, there was no DNA test to prove it, I was just assuming.


Ah.... I had hope that you were fixing to get me some super secrete piece of intel.

*grins*


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## d.heather

KevinR said:


> I was curious about drone combs in breeder hives for saturating an area with good DNA.
> 
> What time of year do you put the comb in the hive, or do you leave drone comb in year round?
> 
> If I put the comb in the hive. Is it right to plan for 40 days roughly before you want to mate your queens?
> 
> Any help on managing the male half the gene pool would be great.
> 
> Thanks


I have just added drone come to 5 breeder hives here in the UK. Its the middle of February and the temperature here is floating around 8-10°C (46-50°F). This may seem unusually early, but I want to encourage as many British black bee drones to be out flying, so they can saturate the area. British black bees fly at lower temperatures than their Italian cousins, so having early drones means that their genetics are more likely to proliferate. The bees will need feeding a light sugar solution to encourage them to draw the comb and to encourage the queen to lay. Make sure there is plenty of early pollen available locally or you will also need to feed pollen pate.

Here is a useful PDF I found online http://www.wicwas.com/sites/default/files/articles/Bee_Culture/BC2006-06.pdf


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## Oldtimer

This is what you need, such a comb will produce around 3,000 drones in a 4 week cycle. (25 days plus some cell cleaning time for the bees)

2 or 3 such combs in 10 or 20 hives will help stock your DCA.


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## kilocharlie

After you've run your queen rearing cycle, use the drone combs for mite killing. Remove them every time they are close to full of brood and freeze them. If the season is still young on a second year colony, I'll replace it with worker cell combs.


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## diymom

Reviving an older thread, sorry:
I was just reading about Randy Oliver's modified frame for drone laying as part of a varroa control method via culling in 4 week intervals or using alternating in one hive two for 2 week cycles of culling.
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/fighting-varroa-biotechnical-tactics-ii/

I am going to 're read the article again to make sure I understand it. I imagine it can be used in this manner after queen mating so you could raise your drones with which to saturate the area with vsh bees, assuming you have a vsh successful colony you want to use for population saturation.
Anyway, sounds like squarepeg tried this frame and I wanted to know if he had the results the Oliver program did and if anyone culls drones for varroa management successfully and consistently like kilocharlie is saying.


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## squarepeg

my bees drew out the oliver frame as described with nothing but drone cells below the divider bar. i've not done any drone culling, except once by accident because i didn't know how to handle foundationless frames, and held the frame horizontally only to have a large amount of drone brood fall right out of the frame.

i've stopped using the oliver design, because the bees will do the same thing with a fully foundationless frame when introduced early in the season, i.e. draw it out completely with drone comb.


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## diymom

So what do you do with the drone brood? Do you cull from less desirable hives leaving the superior drones from vsh hives and then do you use the culling method beyond that to keep mites down? Is this a good way IYO to actively manage mites? I thought it was really cool.
I need to watch some youtube videos about frame maneuvering. Especially since I have foundationless deeps.


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## AstroBee

diymom said:


> So what do you do with the drone brood?


The objective in this thread is to maximize the number of "good" drones, so you must allow it to emerge. When propagating drones, you accept the potential that mites are building faster in these hives. The last cycle can be discarded to help reduce mites, but hive levels must be checked to make sure they are within tolerable levels. In general I don't use drone trapping to manage mites, but some find it helpful. 

Since 2013, I've adopted OT's method of using foundationless deeps and it works great. Personally, I think the Oliver frame is way too much work.


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## kilocharlie

DIY - you're on the right track  I cull drones for ONE of my 7 mentors, freeze the drone comb to kill the mites, and replace them in the drone mother colonies to get layed up again.

The VSH traits are monitored, but by no means the only criteria. He is largely a pollination contract beekeeper, and pollen gathering is his #1 quantitative check, along with correctly-timed buildup rate is probably his #2 priority. I make meticulous notes of any colonies who have mite infections (whose data is therefore skewed and does not count) or other disorders, and I grade them for colony strength.

He is not so much a breeder, but he does pay attention to stock improvement.


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## diymom

I think I am going to have an observation year before I try any tactics with the drones...primarily to get used to the bees and the hive, now that I have the bees it's a little intimidating, it will take some time to ease into manipulating their hive. 
I have a lot to learn and i don't want to rush into culling until I know what i am doing...


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## squarepeg

what helped me a lot at the beginning was watching other beekeepers work their hives. it gets gradually less intimidating with experience. learn to celebrate mistakes and mishaps as advancing you along the learning curve.


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## diymom

As with all things, experience usually removes the intimidation...I used to have nightmares about driving on the freeway before I got my license, now it's no big deal... hope it's the same with bees.


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## CarolinaBee

AstroBee said:


> I had a bunch of shallow frames donated to my operation and will place them into a deep box with desirable genetics. The bees will build drone comb below the shallow frame's bottom bar. I put two or three of these intermixed between full deep frames in my best colonies and it really helps with drone numbers. If desired, in the Fall you can run your hive tool across the bottom and discard drone brood when its no longer needed. I've tried the green plastic drone comb, but I've had mixed results getting it drawn out as pure drone comb. I now prefer the shallow frame in a deep box much better.


I like this idea. I will try this, as I have shallows in abundance.


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## birddog

I use the same method as Astro bee. Only I use mediums instead of shallows. Most times these will be filled early early in the spring build up providing drones before suitable mating weather here in N E PA


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## joebeewhisperer

KevinR said:


> Oldtimer,
> 
> How can you "know" that the canies were the drones that were successfully mating? Short of DNA testing, I've always wondered around that.
> 
> I have russians, nwc, italians, ferals, VSH mutts, etc... Russian Queens are golden like italians, and I've had italians come out jet black...
> 
> But that's good news about the foundationless frames. I've used that in the past for mite reduction, I was just hoping to "entice" the queens to raise early queens for early breeding.
> 
> This is the first year that I'm going to really try my hand at queen raising at a significant level. I want to make sure that I produce the best queens that I can.


My experiences in color are quite different (but limited to a few hundred queens), but that is another discussion entirely. Not sure any traits actually pass linked to color so not all that important. 

I took my most prolific colony (all Russian) coming out of winter and begged and pleaded with her to lay some drone frames up (which I purchased last fall and were partially drawn). I put in a frame feeder in March, and this was the only colony getting in-hive feed this early.

On March 21, I finally caught her laying up the first drone frame. Hundreds of drone eggs, I was elated. Now I could count down to grafting time. I gently set her on top of a frame a few inches away as I continued inspecting. I was brief. On March 28 the inspector came (pic below) and we couldn't see a single drone egg/larvae in the frame. He wanted me to get a shot of the frame as the build-angle on the cells was clearly visible. Thankfully, hundreds of them were still around on the frame (hard to see against the green background I guess) and emerged April 14-15. By then I had a second drone frame started in the same hive. The configuration was mmd, with the first drone frame placed pretty much between to frames of brood in the top (deep), and the second placed on the other edge of brood. I have since moved one of them into another hive to allow another colony to share in raising free-loaders. 

We live in the mountains at 2K' elevation so spring is 2 weeks later coming to our area. But at this point there's a sea of drones as every hive is producing a few hundred to a few thousand. I am making more of a concerted effort this year on the drone side. Hope it goes well for you! 


__
http://instagr.am/p/Cbql2bSM_6B/


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## GregB

joebeewhisperer said:


> .........On March 28 the inspector came (pic below) and we couldn't see a single drone egg/larvae in the frame. He wanted me to get a shot of the frame as the build-angle on the cells was clearly visible...........


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