Maintaining a drone population

[busybeephilip]

A couple of years ago I spent an afternoon everting drones with Tim B and a lot were firing blanks, or were too old. I think if you want drones of the correct age for II you need to get the timing right with regard to when the comb goes in and when the drones are harvested. The ones that we were popping were just randomly harvested at the entrance of a colony by placing an excluder over the front once they were out flying on a sunny afternoon.

Marking Drones after hatching helps ! The newly hatched drones are easily identified and marked rather than taking them randomly using a queens excluder method like you and Tim did. For most persons who try II obtaining enough clean semen is the difficult part.

[Jon]

It was Tim's project and my commitment was limited to gathering up a few drones from him to experiment with. I have had an offer of the lend of a Schley apparatus but finding the time for the palaver is my problem.

[Little_John]

Carl Jurica in his book mentions that he stops some late queens from mating and keeps them through winter as a source of early drones the following year. There's some good tips and thoughts in his book but I don't reckon that that's one of them.

Just came across this:

I do not know that the length of life of the Drone has been satisfactorily ascertained - in fact, we may conclude they usually meet with a violent death before they are three months old, but I have in a Queenless stock kept Drones alive from Autumn until the following Spring.

A Manual of Beekeeping, John Hunter (late Honorary Secretary of the British Beekeepers Association), 4th Ed. 1884, page 19.

Unfortunately the author gives no clue as to the intended purpose of over-wintering drones.

LJ

[Jon]

Some of my colonies overwinter a few drones.