Maintaining a drone population

[prakel]

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.

Totally agree with you.

I've just skimmed through the section to remind myself what it was that he actually wrote. I can't see any tricks mentioned, not even a recommendation to add worker brood etc which is something I would have thought an absolute necessity to make the plan work. The reasoning behind this apparent omission may have been to stop the production of undersized drones as he does mention that he fills the hive with drone comb culled from other colonies during the course of the summer but I'd have thought that the worker brood could still be added, with the aid of an excluder.

On the one hand he clearly states that he's running a business as a queen producer so I'm inclined to think that he must have had 'something' but on the other hand I don't buy into the method at all; it just doesn't feel right to me and anyway I don't have any use for early drones.

[gavin]

Couldn't that approach work simply to provide a drone-friendly home for drones raised in better times in a colony headed by a fertile queen? If winter holds them in the state they were in during autumn, then the colonies might emerge in spring with still-viable drones which were fed well in late summer or early autumn. Presumably they would largely need only carbohydrate overwinter. Would drones raised in, say, August, survive to April if the colony was predisposed to feed and welcome the adult drones?

If that was true then culling drone combs from several colonies to place in a colony without a properly fertile queen could indeed be a reservoir of a useful diversity of drone genotypes, just what you need in queen raising.

OK, here's another question. If I was to remove the fertile queen in a colony now that had already largely jetisoned its drones (and replace her with a ripe cell), might that colony welcome and host the drone population drifting in from other colonies in the apiary? For this, I'm not thinking of overwintering drones, just ensuring they're not kicked out from these other colonies and lost in the next few weeks.

These things interest me as a short season of queen raising is OK when you don't need many queens, but if you have limited resources and a need for as many queens as possible (either you're going commercial or would like to serve a large community of LA members) then extending the season at both ends is attractive.

PS Excellent discussion so far folks! Thanks ....

[prakel]

Just a side comment, a commercial carnica breeder from the continent told me recently that he wound things up at the end of July this year due to the bad weather that they were experiencing in his locality.

[prakel]

My first experiments to assure an early supply if drones dealt along the idea of trying to overwinter existing drones.This did not prove too practical, since it was hard to get large numbers into hives and keep them there........

Practical Queen Production In the North. by Carl A. Jurica Ph.D.

I was tempted to copy the full chapter but as the book's in print and the now ageing author is trying to raise some income from it I've decided not to. There's some thought provoking ideas in this little book which carries a 1985 copyright.

[Jon]

Just a side comment, a commercial carnica breeder from the continent told me recently that he wound things up at the end of July this year due to the bad weather that they were experiencing in his locality.

That where I would be a wee bit skeptical with the 'bees know best' mantra.
A colony preparing to swarm or supersede needs to have weather knowledge 3 -6 weeks ahead with regard to the chances of getting mated.

I have 4 colonies at the moment with supersedure virgins present and in all 4 the old queen who was laying fine has already disappeared.
That makes no sense to me but hey, the bees know best!
Good weather forecast for next week so maybe they have a better idea than Michael Fish.

[prakel]

There are a couple threads on Beesource where Michael Palmer has mentioned a French local-strain which it's claimed anticipates the (lavender?) flow. Can't remember exact details at present but it's a rare reference to such behaviour.

[Jon]

Anticipating a regular flow in a particular geographic area - that would be subject to natural selection if it were fairly regular. year on year Predicting the weather a month ahead in the UK with regard to queen mating is another matter.

[lindsay s]

I’m sure that some boffins out there must have researched over wintering drones and their viability in the next spring but I can’t be bothered to google it. I suggest that Gavin gets his marking pen out and puts a queen excluder below the brood box; the worst that can happen is a pile of dead drones before Christmas!
Could it be that the current years drones get chucked out over the winter and the ones we see in a drone laying colony in the early spring have been laid after the brood break? That’s my $64,000 question.

[prakel]

Anticipating a regular flow in a particular geographic area - that would be subject to natural selection if it were fairly regular. year on year Predicting the weather a month ahead in the UK with regard to queen mating is another matter.

Yes, it was just another of my perhaps irritating side-line references, not strictly applicable to this thread.

[mbc]

Drones have a limited window of usefulness, even when queenless colonies pick up the drones discarded from other colonies I doubt that many of them are actually much cop when it comes to properly fertilising virgin queens.