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question about drone brood

1K views 2 replies 3 participants last post by  Michael Bush 
#1 ·
This will be just my second season beekeeping and I need to know something about drone brood. In my TBH, I noticed today lots and lots of drone brood. Much more than I am accustomed to seeing in a hive. I don't believe it is a laying worker because there is worker brood also, but almost an entire comb is food stores on top, and drone brood on the bottom half or so of both sides. This just seems like an excessive amount to me. Otherwise, the hive looks great. All the other combs are food stores and/or worker brood. Lots of stores, lots of bees, and a healthy additude. Any ideas or suggestions as to whether or not I should be concerned or if I am over-reacting? Oh, the good news is no signs of varroa in any of the cells I inspected.
 
#3 ·
There are a couple of possibilities. The workers have an urge to build brood or the queen just started laying brood in some comb they built for honey storage or the queen is not very fertile and wants to lay more brood than she should. How old is the queen?

Basically I agree with Ian. If it's almost all drone brood, pull the drone comb and render it. You can use it to check for mites. Pull some of the larvae out with an uncapping fork and see if you see the dark red spots. You can freeze it and put it back in and they will clean it, but if the queen finds it before you pull it back out, she'll lay it full again.
 
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