# Drone Availability



## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

A three year old "Egg Donor Queen" finally expired. I let this nuc grow two replacement queen cells. This morning I observed that one of them had emerged and that she had destroyed the other cell. I then located her, she wasn't outstanding, but was a nice looking virgin.

In a few more weeks I hope to discover that she successfully located drones and is well mated. All of my own hives are still drone-free, though the strongest hives have fair quantities of drone brood, but still quite a ways away from abundant sexually mature drones. It is possible that feral colonies have plenty of drones, and that my virgins are possibly mating with a majority of these feral drones anyways.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Joseph, I was wondering about your area a month ago. I thought I'd seen in the news that AZ had some unusually cold weather, and I was wondering if it had been cold enough to knock back the AHB population. Did it?


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

Hi,
USDA zone 9 here. We have plenty of drones in the hives now. You guys can't be far behind us.
I guess you'll know the answer to you're question within a couple weeks.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Adrian,
We have had an exceptionally cold winter. I don't yet know if it has had any effect on the AHB populations.

KQ6AR,
I still only see capped and open drone brood in some of my colonies, no drones. Today I observed that the new virgin queen has plumped up significantly, but hasn't begun laying yet. Hopefully she will lay soon and I can then see how the bees cap her worker-cell brood - may it actually be worker brood.


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## franktrujillo (Jan 22, 2009)

hello seen drones in my hives i live in Colorado 6000' yesterday don't know when they emerged i was work also my back slipped out so doc said i can't lift nothing heavy for a few days....have another beekeeper friend that's going to help lift the boxes off for me hope there's queen cells.we will be grafting for the first time...


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

I think I'll start grafting as soon as I see drones that have emerged - they should be mature before the first group of virgins are ready to mate. A few weeks ago I placed combs with sections of drone comb in the heart of the brood nest, soon thereafter I noticed the queens had laid in some of them, now they've been sealed for at least a few days, some for about a week, and the queens are laying more drone cells every day. I know some of my drones may be related to some of my virgins, but not all are. I just hope that when they're ready they can find a sufficiency. I hope that some of my earlier absconded mating nucs have managed to establish feral colonies and that they are strong enough to add lots of drones to my drone congregation areas.

It would be nice, too, if our recent record-setting cold weather may have reduced the AHB colonies in the area. I know it likely didn't get them all, since some of the largest AHB colonies reside in the walls of heated buildings.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Checked several hives the day before yesterday (late afternoon on 1 April 2011), they all had at least a dozen drones with more emerging, including many more eggs and young larva in drone cells.

I think that's good enough to get started grafting queens. Saturday morning I set up a cell-builder/finisher and grafted my first dozen cells. Later this morning I will check on them and re-graft any that didn't take.


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