Very few drones

[chiefman]

Ive noticed very few drones in my hive. ( which may be a good thing i'm not sure)

I intended to split the colony later in the year so i may want to use some drone foundation. Is it just a matter of inserting a frame with Drone foundation.

Also what about a Half normal foundation and half drone foundation on one frame will that work.?

[Michael Bush]

If you only have one hive, you don't really want your qeen from your hive to mate with drones from your hive. Inbreeding is not only bad for the genetics in genral but can cause a queen to lay a lot of drones because of oher factors. There are usually drones around somewhere. I wouldn't bother with the drone foundation for just doing a split.

What I do think it's useful for is honey supers (if you run an excluder) and if you want to use the drones for a mite magnet. Or if you are breeding queens to pick a drone mother to get good breeding and outbreeding in your stock.

[chiefman]

Is there a risk if the queen mates with wild stock she may pass these genes on to my hive.

What about if i had say 4 hives would there be a problem inbreeding.?

[Michael Bush]

I figure feral hives are either recently absconded from domestic, in which case they are similar in genetics to your hive, or they are survivors in which case they have some good genes to survive the mites. Either way it's not a bad situation.

If you have four hives and want to control the breeding of your bees, I would pick a breed and buy my queens of the same breed from different breeders. Stock from one breeder may very likely all be sisters from the same mother.