# Drone Mothers per Queen Mother



## Beewrangler (Feb 20, 2010)

How many drone mother colonies should I have for every queen mother colony? Also I read somewhere that the drone mothers should be placed a mile to mile and a half away from the mating yard to ensure better mating with my stock not a wild or unknown stock. Does anyone have any experience with this that can help me out? This spring will be my first time queen rearing and any information on this would be greatly appreciated.


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

If you have a deep frame in your drone mother colony it will have about 4000 cells for the queen to lay in if she lays %80 of the cells that = 3200 Drones enough for about 80-100 Queen matings if they are Healthy .

What you need to know is the queen will not lay all of the drone cell in a day or two Usually it may take a 7 or 10 day Period especially on there first early comb of drone brood so it will not be able to have enough drones to mate with 80-100 Queens at one or days time.

The drone will maturing over a 7-10 day time so they will be able only to mate with 20 queens every other day for this 7-10 day time 

So if you have 5 Drone mothers you can mate 100 Queens every other day. If the drone mother hives keep pumping out drones.This number will be about 32 Drones per queen. Some drones will not be good for mating for some reason or another with mites diseases or birds or other insects

So I would have about double the drone colonies for alternating different stages of drones. You can adjust these figures according to how many queens your trying to get mated and how long into the season you are going to be having queens mated

These are my figures it is what i would kinda figure 

http://s59.photobucket.com/albums/g307/vlwbee/?action=view&current=100_0696.jpg


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

I believe strongly that people have been using less and less drone colonies for the past twenty years, causing serious problems from poorly mated queens... I overstock drones... it may not always be necessary, but it certainly cant hurt... for every 10-20 queens that you plan to raise in each cycle, you should add one drone colony... there is a minimum as well... I would not start at all without at least 5 drone colonies... even if I were only mating 10 queens. 

Heavy drone populations will create more DCAs (drone congregation areas)... the more there are and the more drones there are in each one, the closer your queen will be able to properly mate... this is not only important for her safety, but also because she will be more apt to mate with MORE drones... a sense of urgency in an area where she has to travel farther from home to find drones may lead to her rushing through the process and not being fully successful. 

I have read several post this year with people saying that they planted cells to requeen, then the new queens would lay normally for a while, then suddenly disappear... this is due to poor mating... they most likely didnt have enough healthy drones in the area, or they had a serious predator around at the time they were mating or just before... migratory birds are one such predator... mites are another... In either case there needs to be more than enough drones... much more.

There are a few other threads where we discussed this further... 

Hope this helps!


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Velbert said:


> So if you have 5 Drone mothers you can mate 100 Queens every other day.
> So I would have about double the drone colonies for alternating different stages of drones.


Dave Tarpy says the number of drone mothers is the square root of the number of mating nucs. 

So your 5 per 100 queens doubled is just that. 10. The square root of 100 mating nucs is 10 drone mothers.


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## ChristopherA (Jul 20, 2010)

Speaking raising drones.

I will only have 30 to 60 nucs this spring for mating nucs.

I have already selected an area about 400 yards from my home apiary to put 2 to 4 drone colonies. From reading this, I might just put 5 there.

Question I have, do people raise drones on the green drone frames, or do you foundationless and let them build their own comb? If so, how many frames is enough for a drone mother colony?

Thanks Again, a lot of worldly advice I am using coming from knowledgable people.

Thanks Thanks Thanks

Chris

PS...russell still waiting for the AMM breeders


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## beekuk (Dec 31, 2008)

*>I believe strongly that people have been using less and less drone colonies for the past twenty years, causing serious problems from poorly mated queens<*

I agree with the above,and over this way some also have what is in my view, the stupid practice of culling just about every drone they find, in the name of varroa control,and then wonder why there are problems with queens mating.
Apart from this culling,and the fact that many drones can be infertile,which can be caused by certain mite treatments, its no real surprise that there can be mating problems,my method is much the same as Roberts,flood the area with far more drones than are ever really needed,and i don't have any problems with getting well mated queens....now if we could only flood the area with the appropriate weather when needed...


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

ChristopherA said:


> Question I have, do people raise drones on the green drone frames, or do you foundationless and let them build their own comb? If so, how many frames is enough for a drone mother colony?
> 
> Thanks Again, a lot of worldly advice I am using coming from knowledgable people.
> 
> ...


You can use the green frames if you like... plastic requires a heavy flow to draw, so foundation may be better to produce earlier drones... (mann lake has them) You can use foundationless also, just try to remove any other drone cells so they will make more drone cells in the new comb than worker cells... Paint or at least make a good noticable mark on the top of your drone frames so you can easily identify them for future manipulation.

ps... I have plenty of AMMs. Breeders require II though, so they are more expensive... I am in the process of adding the II services to the website.
Thanks!


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## mackelby (Dec 5, 2010)

Drone mother??? Please explain, I thought queens laid what was needed.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

beekuk said:


> I agree with the above,and over this way some also have what is in my view, the stupid practice of culling just about every drone they find, in the name of varroa control,and then wonder why there are problems with queens mating.
> Apart from this culling,and the fact that many drones can be infertile,which can be caused by certain mite treatments, its no real surprise that there can be mating problems,my method is much the same as Roberts,flood the area with far more drones than are ever really needed,and i don't have any problems with getting well mated queens....now if we could only flood the area with the appropriate weather when needed...


Pete,

I think you are absolutely right about the use of drone frames to control varroa taking a toll on queens... We have had tons of reports of poorly mated queens from operations that use drone comb to trap varroa, as well as from operations near others that do so... I believe that the greatest issues come from poor instruction... I was raised with the saying that "No information is better than false information"... The speakers and teachers of today seem to follow the trend of using "gimics" that a sponser is selling instead of teaching the basics of the biology and mechanics of the specie... Bee keepers are for the most part agriculturally minded people, I believe that if they were taught more about bees and less about "tricks", they would be better prepaired to make the right decissions in their operations. Do you see this type of thing happening much in the UK as well?


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

mackelby said:


> Drone mother??? Please explain, I thought queens laid what was needed.


The social dynamics of the colony has an effect on this as well... the bees will create more drone cells if there is a lack of drone cells already... if there are enough, they will draw worker cells in new comb... the queen sees the different sized cell and either uses semen for worker cells or just an egg for drone cells...

The term "drone mother" is used here to identify a colony that has been selected for the queens genetics (as the drones produced by the queen will be copies of her make up, not the drones that she has bred with), these colonies are used to produce the drones in a mating area so that the queens produced from grafted colonies will have a higher chance of mating with the drones from the breeders best colonies... The "queen mother" colonies are the ones that will be grafted from (as the drones that these queens had mated with will have effect on the queens produced from the graft)... drone production from these colonies can be restricted to limit the possibilty of inbreeding...


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## LT (Aug 17, 2006)

12% minimum


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## Beewrangler (Feb 20, 2010)

Thanks for all the great information here. Any thoughts on how far away from the mating yard the drone colonies should be? Should the drone colonies be split up into multiple spots (ie two drone colonies to the west, two to the east and so on)?


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

I put them together in one location within a few hundred yards from my mating nucs. Check out the "drone nuc" thread... beekuk provided a great link that may help many better understand the process of mating flights and drone congregation.

Hope it helps!


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## Beewrangler (Feb 20, 2010)

rrussell6870 said:


> I put them together in one location within a few hundred yards from my mating nucs. Check out the "drone nuc" thread... beekuk provided a great link that may help many better understand the process of mating flights and drone congregation.



I have a place to put drone colonies about a mile away, or they will have to be within 50 or 100 yard. Do you think it would be better to go with the site closer or farther away? obviously I would rather use the closer option, is there something I can do to make this a better option (ie. more drone mother colonies)?

And thanks again, you guys have been great.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

I would use the close location. You want as many healthy drones as possible, so test your mite population, use drone comb to encourage uniform drone cells that you can more easily manipulate, use 1 drone colony for every 10 queen nucs that you plan to run, and again, even if I were going to only use ten nucs, I would use a minimum of four or five good drone colonies.

Hope this helps!


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