Drone management

[Dale Hodges]

I've got a question for the queen breeders in the group. How are you doing your drone management? Do you use drone comb for your drones? Are you using drone comb for mite control? Being in FL and wanting queens as early as possible I hesitate to freeze the first drone of the season, but wondering what I'm doing to my hives as far as mites are concerned. I've always tried to saturate the area with as many of "my" drones as possible, but good IPM seems to be to freeze the first combs of the season. What I've been doing is powdered sugar about every 10 days in DEC then letting the first combs hatch. Has anyone come of with a better plan? You'd think after all these years I'd be answering the questions instead of asking, but the rules are changing!:confused:

[tecumseh]

Well I really wouldn't call myself a queen breeder but I do select drone mothers for my mating yards. I sometimes shuffle a 'bad comb' in to the drone mother hives but basically I just leave'em alone. On the run up to the season I try to keep'em fed up and churning.

The only drone comb for mite control I might employ is I pluck mature drone larvae as an informal count of mite level. In the early spring I also rake a lot of drone comb in my production hives.

[Dan Williamson]

I also would hesitate to call myself a queen breeder. Yes I have breeder queens but I think I'll need alot more experience before I'll feel comfortable with that title.

HOWEVER, I use drone comb in select colonies to maximize the numbers of drones for mating. I will feed pollen and syrup to all colonies early on and will continue on a little longer with my drone and starter/finisher colonies for obvious reasons.

I have never frozen drone comb so I can't really speak to that. If your goal is early queens, I personally wouldn't want to kill the first good batches of drones from select colonies that my queens will need. I might wait until after I've gotten my queens mated.

I've only done sugar dusting once this past season. I may attempt more of it this year but not sure on that so I can't really give you much info on that.

Bottom line is that I do use drone comb in my drone colonies. I try to have at least the equivalent of one deep frame of drone comb in each of these colonies. I think I had 12 such colonies last year. I never did any special mite treatments until the end of the season on these colonies. At that time I used Apiguard on them.

One thing I did notice is that I had colonies without additional drone comb that had much higher mite levels than my drone colonies. I had expected my drone colonies to have more but that wasn't the case at least this past year.

[Michael Bush]

There were small black survivor bees here before I brought the bees out. I consider that my drone supply. There seems to be no shortage of them and they are the stock I wish to breed.

[Dale Hodges]

Yeah, I had a bee tree here for 20+ years (small black bee) they did a lot of
of the breeding. 4 years ago when they showed up to do a little light cleanup, I started to see mites:( Their gone now but I still have a lot of that line in my bees. I guess I was worried not pulling the drones combs to freeze them I would be leaving to many mites in the hive, I guess I'll just let the first of the season hatch out and freeze late ones.

[bleta12]

One way to deal with the mite load in the drone colonies we use for matting our queen, may be a flash treatment with Formic Acid Mite Away II. I have not done such a treatment during summer but I have thought of doing it.
I am not sure if FA may have an affect on the reproducing qualities of the drones, if that is the case I may stop using it at all (lol).

Gilman

[Michael Bush]

"Based on the negative effects fluvalinate treatments had on drones (Rinderer et al.
1999), De Guzman et al. (1999) examined the effects of formic acid treatment on the
development and production of drones. Formic acid in a gel formulation was tested for
the control of varroa in drone producing colonies during the queen-breeding season.

"Results of their study were discouraging. Colonies treated with formic acid removed most
of the drone eggs from combs and delayed much of the colony’s drone production. In
addition, treated colonies produced less than half as many drones as untreated colonies
(means of 1549 vs. 3800 drones, respectfully) and adult drone longevity was reduced.
Similarly, Westcott and Winston (1999) discovered that colonies treated with formic acid
had reduced brood areas compared to control colonies, which could potentially reduce
colony strength. The amount of honey produced by colonies can also be affected by
formic acid, depending on the formulation. Skinner et al. (2001) tested two formulations
of 65% formic acid: a gel, and the other with formic acid absorbed into a fibreboard pad.
Colonies exposed to formic acid in the fibreboard pad stored less honey than both control
colonies and colonies treated with the formic acid gel formulation." --The Effects of Miticides on the Reproductive Physiology of Honey Bee (Apis mellifera L.) Queens and Drones, Lisa Marie Burley

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-08162007-092313/unrestricted/lmburley.pdf

[tecumseh]

mr hodges writes:
What I've been doing is powdered sugar about every 10 days in DEC then letting the first combs hatch. Has anyone come of with a better plan?

tecumseh replies:
don't know about better... possible different? like I suggested earlier I try to do the least number of things with my drones hives as possible. I do select them (before they are move to the mating locations-early spring) primarily (not exclusively) for there low level of mites.

[Dale Hodges]

I guess one of my worries about mites is , once they hit that certain population level they seem multiply at almost unrealistic speed. I use fogging and sugar dusting to keep the numbers in check, so far that has been working. Having the pleasure of being a beekeeper for 40+ years I've learned how fast things can go bad. I can remember the first SHB I saw about 7 or 8 years ago, I closed up the hive , and thought " what possible harm could that little bug do":eek:
If I pull a frame of drone brood today, I'd have to uncap a lot of cells to find one with mites. I guess my question should have been...If I continue to let the first generation of drones hatch, what kind of risk am I running of reaching that level where they reproduce almost uncontrolable.

[tecumseh]

mr hodges writes:
what kind of risk am I running of reaching that level where they reproduce almost uncontrolable.

tecumseh replies:
I like to 'choose' drone stock that doesn't.

from a pest control prospective (in individual hives) the idea is to knock the top off the varroa wave (when varroa numbers are increasing at a decreasing rate).

[Dale Hodges]

"increasing at a decreasing rate??" Is that a typo? or do I just have the dummies today?

[Kieck]

Let's say you start out with 10 of something. The next day, it's 11. Then 13. Then 16. Then 25. Then 48. Then 100. Then 250.

That's "increasing at an increasing rate."

Now let's start with 10 again. The next day, it's 35. The day after that, it's 45. Then 50. Then 52. Then 51.

That's "increasing at a decreasing rate."

[Dale Hodges]

Got it! thanks

[BEES4U]

Here is a suggestion:
Purchase some Pierco drone comb, feed the drone mother colony a slow steady supply of sugar syrup, and pollen to encourage the hive to produce drones. I like to pour the pollen pellets into the one side of a drawn out frame and spray syrup over the top. Place the pollen comb next to the frame with drone brood. Move the frame with sealed drone brood into a strong well fed QUEEN LEES hive to nuture the drones as they need 14 days post emergence to be ready for mating.
Remember that each virgin queen need to mate with at least 15 drones.
That would be 1:15, 2:30, 3: 45, 100: 1,500 and so on---------
Good Luck with the drone production
Ernie
BEES4U

[tecumseh]

thanks kieck for the elaboration...

mr hodges:
there are three regions to your typical growth curve (sigmoid growth curve*): region 1: the very bottom portion of the curve is bending upward and the slope is getting increasingly steep so the growth function is increasing here at an increasing rate. region 2 the middle portion of the curve is still bending upward but here the slope is steadily becoming less steep so the growth curve here is increasing at a decreasing rate. finally region 3 is that portion of the curve where the curve is bending downward (the total is declining) and here the curve-slope relationship is commonly referred to as decreasing at a decreasing rate.

*the total population of both bees and mites can be accurately described using a sigmoid growth curve (very common to both bioliogy and economics).

a lot of pest management strategies are designed around the idea of identifying when 'a pest' population begins to increase at a decreasing rate (identifying region 2). if you think about the problem very casually then region 1 would seem to be the place to implement some pest control since 'the pest' are increasing at such an alarming rate. in fact at this level 'the pest', although increasing rapidly, don't really represent any significant economic (read money) damages. in region 2 'the pest' total numbers have increased to the point to where their total numbers are creating real economic damages and if you allow their numbers to increase further eventually the will devour their resources (ie the hive dies) and their numbers will collapse on their own ('the pest' growth numbers have entered region 3).