# Early Drones in the Northeast



## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

You could ask a package producer to shake you a package of drones I guess.

Short season? Lynn Barton produces thousands of well mated queens in NY each year. He's west of the Catskills.
Michael Palmer, whose hives are in northeast NY above Plattsburgh and in northwestern VT. He has no trouble at all growing queens for selling and making Summer nucs.

How many queens do you want to make and for what purposes?


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

No-sage said:


> Is there a good way to get drones for mating, early in the season in the NE?


Pray for good weather?

There's nothing you can do. Not really. You just have to wait until the bees are ready and there are plenty of drones. The bees will tell when the time is right.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

No-sage said:


> Is there a good way to get drones for mating, early in the season in the NE?
> 
> With our short season, I'm looking to get any time advantage I can.


move your hives that need drones, close to Marks when he comes back up from S.C.


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## NH Beekeeper (Jan 18, 2015)

One tip I picked up out of a northern queen breeders book was by Carl Jurica, Ph.D. In his book Titled= Practical Queen Production in the North

Was to keep a virgin in the hive during the fall for 3 weeks to keep her from getting mated. Thus you have a drone layer and get that hive through the winter and you have an automatic drone layer come early spring.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

One tip I could give you, in response to Dr. Jurica's comment.....

Patience Grasshopper


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

NH Beekeeper said:


> Thus you have a drone layer and get that hive through the winter and you have an automatic drone layer come early spring.


That may sound good on paper, but I suspect the likelihood of successfully overwintering a drone layer is low. I'm sure its possible, but at what cost? Perhaps if you were going to use the drones in instrumental insemination where you can capture them and utilize a high percentage, but for open mating, probably not a great use of resources. Even if they made it to spring, lots of resources (brood) would need to be given so they could rear drones. Sounds like a wasteful use of bees.

I suspect that the best course is to allow bees to rear them when they decide its best. Of course give all your drone mother colonies drone comb near the outside of the brood nest to make it more likely to get them going early.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Suppose, just suppose you could flip a switch on a certain day and have your drone-queen start laying in preparation for using her offspring to fertilize other queens you'd be raising at some pre-determined time in the future. (this spring) 

Gee, that's easy. All you have to know is exactly when the honey flow will start TO THE DAY.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Or not worry about it.


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## NH Beekeeper (Jan 18, 2015)

The technique Looks even worse from a computer/phone screen. Unless you have tryed it and made it happen then it all sounds bad. Unfortunately I must have move my indicator block to the wrong hive and sent 1 to Florida on the load back in mid Dec. Otherwise I would show you pics come April back here in the North East.

Been there done that.
Maybe next year I can show you what I am talking about.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

If you are sending bees to FL, when they get back they should have plenty of drones in them. If you want early drones, get your FL bees up to VT early.


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## NH Beekeeper (Jan 18, 2015)

This is my first winter in Fla with almost all my bees. Throwing in drawn out drone frames and the stupid girls are filling frames with nectar. Want drones so I can get some cells going for splits.


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## Ravenseye (Apr 2, 2006)

I know it's not proper posting protocol but........

What Mark said!


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