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Thread: Maintaining a drone population

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Part of the Bibba folklore is that native colonies retain their drones for longer than colonies of other subspecies.
    Anyone got any evidence for this? I would love it to be true as it would mean that you could get a batch of pure matings by waiting until September.

    The other thing I came across recently thanks to Dara Scott, who is also a speaker in Wales, is this paper which claims that a colony will start to make drones when it has 4000 workers. I am skeptical. I would have put the number far higher than that. 4000 bees would only cover about 3 frames.

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    The colonies with vigorous drone populations in my operation at this time of year are more likely to be the ones with inappropriately mated queens which are still brooding like mad, when I come across these I take nucs from them, replace the frames with foundation and feed heavily to build them up again for winter, marking her for requeening once shes spent herself making a new nest. The other type of colonies with plentiful drones are those with defective, or no, queens, and I cant see the value in breeding from these either.

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    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    Part of the Bibba folklore is that native colonies retain their drones for longer than colonies of other subspecies.
    Anyone got any evidence for this? I would love it to be true as it would mean that you could get a batch of pure matings by waiting until September.
    Some of my colonies are known (grafted) daughters from Amm … about as close as I can get here. Some are alongside colonies of 'Heinz' parentage. There doesn't appear to be any difference in the drone numbers remaining i.e. they've almost all gone.

    Re. the 4000 bees … I don't ever remember seeing drones being raised in what I would consider a weak 5 frame nuc. Perhaps it's related to colony density? Strong nucs certainly generate them … once they are thinking of doing a runner.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    A strong 5 frame nuc could have more than 10,000 bees in it. Isn't the rule of thumb something like 1500-2000 bees per side of comb if it is densely covered.
    I just think that figure of 4000 workers being a trigger for drone production can't be right - irrespective of any subspecies differences.

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    Quote Originally Posted by mbc View Post
    I'm with Prakel in that its best to do queen rearing when the bees think its best. Enough drones to mate the odd late supercedure queen is a different kettle of fish to getting consistent results with mating whole batches of grafted queens IMO.
    We came across a lovely supersedure cell that was about to be sealed in one of my hives on Tuesday. The queen was still there and the and there was a lot of brood at all stages on the frames. At any other time of year that cell would have been used to make up a nuc. Some of the other beekeepers present thought I should leave it as the bees no best but unfortunately the cell got the chop. Most of my colonies were chucking out their drones and the same thing was happening at two nearby apiaries we had visited earlier in the day (we had a bee inspector with us). There was nothing wrong with the present queen and the chances of getting a virgin mated up here in mid-September would be pretty poor. So I hope I’ve made the right choice and I don’t end up with a queen less colony next year. To be honest unless there’s a problem I’m never in the brood boxes after the first week of September, but I’ve had queen less/drone laying colonies in the Spring and I wonder if failed late supersedures might be the cause rather than failing queens.
    Last edited by lindsay s; 29-08-2014 at 11:40 PM.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    'The bees know best' is one of the biggest bits of nonsense in beekeeping. Sometimes they don't appear to have a clue especially with supersedure.
    I had a colony which was queenright with brood all stages at the start of March. Next time I looked at the end of March there was no queen, an opened supersedure cell and a virgin on the comb. There was no chance of having any mature drones for well over a month so I nipped it and combined the colony with the one next door.
    The other thing is that 'perfect' supersedure where the old queen is retained until the new queen is laying is quite rare.Usually the old queen is gone before the new queen has even emerged from the cell which is a very risky survival strategy.

    I checked a few apideas and nucs yesterday evening and found about 8-10 with queens just started to lay so the queens are still finding a few drones out and about - hopefully my own.

    Ps Lindsay, I have removed supersedure cells and the queen has gone on for another 18 months so you will probably be OK.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    'The bees know best' is one of the biggest bits of nonsense in beekeeping.
    Maybe in some circumstances, but with regard to when one can achieve the best "bang for your buck" with queen rearing, there can be no doubt that timing your queenrearing activity to coincide with when the bees do the bulk of their natural increase will provide far more consistent results than any attempts out of sink with them that know best.

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    Senior Member Jon's Avatar
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    Good weather plus lots of drones in June and July is the ideal time for getting queens mated.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jon View Post
    Good weather plus lots of drones in June and July is the ideal time for getting queens mated.
    Not quite, in my experience the best queens are from matings following the first flush of early swarming in May and early June, followed by a brief hiatus of a week or so, normally during mid to late June, and then another spell of very assured mating from late June through till the first few weeks of August and tailing off as August stretches out. Sometimes it can be quite baffling that virgins can remain unmated during the second half of August despite the scorchio, kids on the beach, weather we often get.
    Remarkably, continuing the "bees know best" theme, cell raisers, despite being set up as close as possible to the same throughout the season, also yield the most consistent results in terms of quality and quantity of finished cells during these two most favourable phases of the season. The precise dates vary by up to a fortnight depending on the season and yet the bees seem to predict it correctly and mostly have their virgins out and about at the most propitious times. I remain convinced by close observation of my bees over twenty plus seasons that the bees do indeed "know best".
    Last edited by mbc; 30-08-2014 at 02:31 PM. Reason: late August bafflement

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    Quote Originally Posted by prakel View Post

    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.
    Any colonies with drone laying queens that I’ve come across in the springtime are usually in a pretty poor state. I find it hard to believe that a dwindling colony with old workers and no nurse bees could produce good quality drones for mating. On the other hand he maybe has a way around this? This is my layman’s point of view.

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