# Drone question



## Lesli St. Clair (Jan 3, 2005)

It clear watching my hives that the queens either mated with some Carni-type bees, since some workers are dark with gray stripes and others are "Italian" type. However, I noticed that the drones also vary (within a single hive), some being gold and others black. 

Since they come from unfertilized eggs, does this mean that the queens themselves are "mutts"? And that each drone gets a different mix of her genes? My ABC and XYZ isn't giving me info on this.


----------



## BjornBee (Feb 7, 2003)

Drones in any hive could of come from any place. Hives will allow drones into a hive for a number of reasons. They could of come(raised) from any place, other than the hive they are currently in.


----------



## jalal (Sep 2, 2004)

the queens are mutts, the drones are pure, directly from the mother.

hence the eggs are not fertilized, therefore there is only the mother.

the drones are a male clone of the queen, how about that for simplistic say?


----------



## Lesli St. Clair (Jan 3, 2005)

I'd thought drones would be clones of the mother, which is why seeing various colored drones surprised me. Strange that there would be foreign drones in this particular hive, since it's separate from other three hives (which are about a city block distant). Hmm.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Drones drift shamelessly. Not all the drones in a hive are from that hive or that queen.


----------



## TwT (Aug 5, 2004)

>>the queens are mutts, the drones are pure, directly from the mother.

hence the eggs are not fertilized, therefore there is only the mother.

the drones are a male clone of the queen, how about that for simplistic say? <<


maybe im missing something , but if the mother queen isn't pure then how could the drones that she raises, if shes from 2 different breeds, and the drones are from her then how could the drones be pure, the only way i could see this is if you get a AI queen. now if Leslie's queen's Mother was open breed, her queen could be from 2 type's and then her drones would be to right? if im wrong please explain. aint that were the name mutt's come in.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>maybe im missing something , but if the mother queen isn't pure then how could the drones that she raises, if shes from 2 different breeds, and the drones are from her then how could the drones be pure

The point is that whatever she is, carni, italian, mixed, her drones are precisely the same. They do not have a different father, they only have a mother and their mothers father for genetics. So their genetics will not vary much. However, their genetics ARE haploid, meaning they got a half set of genes. So in theory one drone with the same mother could vary from another drone by WHICH half of the genes they got from their mother.


----------



## TwT (Aug 5, 2004)

ok I understand that the queens drones will be after her, but they can have different colored drones right? if so then the drones leslie is seeing could have come from her queen.

Question??

example:

If I buy a AI queen, then raise from her and then open mate any queens off her, then sell someone else a queen and they open mate her and so on , How many times can these queens go open mated and not be mutts? people call the second and third open mating ( crossed ) , probably 4th and 5th too, I begin to think that most bee's that are sold are like mutts, I understand people raise from the best they have but the way i see it , unless you get a AI queen and AI your self, your getting 95% time a mutt, if im wrong please straighten me out, but for now I feel pretty good about the mutts I got from removals, heck they might be purer than what i bought.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>How many times can these queens go open mated and not be mutts?

If they are open mated, they are mutts.

Open mated queens outproduce II/AI queens everytime. The only advantage to II is to keep a line pure, not to produce production queens.


----------



## drobbins (Jun 1, 2005)

I'm glad I stumbled across this thread, I have a few questions along these lines.
I'm a newbee, 1 hive of italians.
They're doing well and next year I'd like to make a split or 2 off of em.
Obviously, they'll be mutt's, right?
If I let my female golden retiever run down the road and breed with any dog around the puppies will be mutt's. They may look kinda like goldens, but they'll be mutt's (farther from the original bloodline)
As far as the bee's go, this make no difference to me, as long as the new colonies perform well.
My question concerns how breeders handle this problem.
If someone sells me an italian queen for < $20 how can they call it an italian? for that price it's not II/AI. Is it because they have a large yard of italian colonies and have a reasonably high confidence that the queens have mated with their drones? 
If all my neighbors had golden retievers I'd feel a little better about calling my mutt puppies goldens. 
Just trying to understand how things work.

Dave


----------



## ScadsOBees (Oct 2, 2003)

It depends somewhat on the breeder, but if they have 100 hives of italians in a yard that they are raising queens in, and there isn't many other bees within a few miles, there is a pretty good chance that they are going to produce offspring that is from one or more of those hives. Just make sure all of those hives are the desired breed.
Put extra drone comb in some and there will be extra drones of the desired breed.

That is what the breeders in AHB country need to do.


----------



## tarheit (Mar 26, 2003)

>Open mated queens outproduce II/AI queens everytime.
All but one (the oldest) of the published studies I've seen state the opposite. On the other hand, given the cost and time involved for an II/AI queen, it's certainly not cost effective for producing production queens.

A queen may carry recessive and dominate color traits (one from her mother, the other from her father) The drones she lays will vary in color depending if they get the half from her mother, or the half from her father. Purebred queens will tend to have very consistently colored drones, where as muts can have wildly different colored drones. Of course this is greatly simplified because not just one gene controls color, and the way genes replicate and split to form the egg introduces variation as well. (In haploid drones, recessive colors can't be covered up by the dominant half) Then add drifting on top of that.

Workers in one hive can vary even more because you must consider the multiple drones the queen mated with being crossed with her mother or father's DNA.

-Tim


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>If someone sells me an italian queen for < $20 how can they call it an italian?

Because it's yellow.









>for that price it's not II/AI.

Of course not.

>Is it because they have a large yard of italian colonies and have a reasonably high confidence that the queens have mated with their drones? 

That's the theory.

>If all my neighbors had golden retievers I'd feel a little better about calling my mutt puppies goldens. 

Precisely.

>Just trying to understand how things work.

I think you've got it.


----------



## drobbins (Jun 1, 2005)

Thank You Professor








I like the questions you're posting in the 101 section.
You're doing an awfull lot to help us newbee's

Dave


----------



## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

drobbins ask:
My question concerns how breeders handle this problem.
If someone sells me an italian queen for < $20 how can they call it an italian? for that price it's not II/AI. Is it because they have a large yard of italian colonies and have a reasonably high confidence that the queens have mated with their drones?

tecumseh adds:
a commercial breeder will maintain a fairly large number of hives around a queen yard for producing large numbers of drones. so they stuff lots of drone cone in these hives and tilt the odds in their favor for how the new queen will mate.

as to why the drones show color variation I think tarheit has definitely got it, i.e. dominant - recessive gene expression. as to drones hanging out in the hive next door. well, just let me say I was born a sceptic.


----------



## WG Bee Farm (Jan 29, 2005)

It is easy to see how much Drones drift by using an excluder over the front entrance of a hive and capture drones that are trying to enter the hive.
By marking these drones you "claim" these drones belong to this hive. Make sure that you mark a large number of them.
Remove the excluder and after a day or two watch the entrance of all your hives for drones returning. Your will be amazed at the number of marked drones that will be entering into the other hives around your yard. The drifting is more pronounced than you can imagine.
( an easy way to mark the drones. a spray can of paint held at a distance from the drones collected in front of the excluder will give a splattering of paint over the drones & workers trying to enter.)


----------



## oldgreyone (Apr 30, 2005)

The conversation seems to imply that the genetic package of genetic material that a queen gets from her sire or dam are always completely in tact. In other animals there is genome drift which makes no 2 sperm or ovum exactly alike. Is this not true for bees also? And if not what is the mechanism that prevents genetic drift?


----------



## cmq (Aug 12, 2003)

The drone is a genetic duplicate BUT not a genetic clone of the queen. Each and every drone, while being duplicated by the queens genetic makeup will be slightly different due to genetic variations and recombinations of the gene makeup. HOWEVER, all sperm produced by a drone will be "genetic clones".


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Since the queen is diploid and the eggs are haploid, each egg gets half of her genetic makeup with WHICH half of each pair of genes being variable.

Since the drone is haploid and the sperm is haploid each one is exactly a clone of DNA of the drone.


----------



## Hook (Jun 2, 2002)

The drones are produced from unfertilized eggs. Queens are produced by a queen, and up to 17 other drones. My guess, is the variations of drones in a particular hive, come from all of the input that produced the queen, meaning all 17 drones, plus the entire makeup of the queens mother!


----------



## Robert Hawkins (May 27, 2005)

I don't think so. The variations I see in drones come from drifting. Drones visit other hives, see what's on TV, Bum a beer, spend the night, then head back to the Drone Congregation Area. Next night might be a different hive. 

You can't even keep a majority of your drones being sons of your queen. 

Hawk


----------



## briancady413 (Dec 8, 2003)

Hook, I think a queen, while fertilized by 17 or so drones, is herself only the offspring of one queen's egg and and a sperm from a lucky ONE of mom's 17 drone partners.


----------



## teen-bee (Jan 15, 2005)

"on tecumseh adds:
a commercial breeder will maintain a fairly large number of hives around a queen yard for producing large numbers of drones. so they stuff lots of drone cone in these hives and tilt the odds in their favor for how the new queen will mate"

...how do we produce this large number of drones so we can tilt the odds in our favor? is their any step-by-step procedure to raise/produce this large number of drones as commercial breeders do? I got 10 colonies in a home apiary, tried to mate some 6 queens & only 2 got mated in May... gez we need to rear drones too to succeed in queen rearing...


----------



## teen-bee (Jan 15, 2005)

"Put extra drone comb in some and there will be extra drones of the desired breed"

-How do we get the beez to make drones combs? when is the time to have bees make drone combs....? i gez this is d' first step in drone rearing...


----------



## Robert Hawkins (May 27, 2005)

Teen-bee, Drone comb is a large cell foundation that you can special order. Or rather it's what the bees will draw out of that foundation. Big, honking cells that drones are raised in. Some people use them as part of their IPM for varroas.

I still think II is the only way to control which drone mates with your queen.

Hawk


----------



## Aspera (Aug 1, 2005)

It is kind of interesting to think that every drone has a grandfather but no father.


----------



## teen-bee (Jan 15, 2005)

TW was kindenaf to give a link to a queen rearing video... hope anyone, or perhaps TW can give us a link on Drone Rearing.... anybody got a link?


----------



## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Drone rearing is a no-brainer. Even without the use of a frame or two of drone foundation, the bees will produce quite a few drones all by themselves. If you do provide some additional drone foundation, you usually don't have to work to get them to use it.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

The bees will rear plenty of drones all on their own.


----------



## jalal (Sep 2, 2004)

if you really want some drone comb, whynot use comb that they messed up on anyway?

(messed up meaning being made into a drone comb.


----------



## teen-bee (Jan 15, 2005)

(messed up meaning being made into a drone comb. 

...how do you induced bees to messed up the combs a lot...so we can get a lot of drones... lol


----------



## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Give them starter strips instead of full sheets of foundation, or foundationless frames so they can build whatever comb they prefer. Often it will contain a significant amount of drone comb. You could also try using drone foundation, plastic or beeswax if that is available to you.


----------



## bjerm2 (Jun 9, 2004)

I take old comb and remove the middle of it and the bees fill it up with drone comb. I use medium supers and each supper has one comb like that. Get lots of drone for both AI and for using as an mite 'trap'.
Dan


----------

