4.9 & drone foundatioin

[Queenannsrevenge]

I spent the day today building new frames and putting together 4.9 foundation for a new package of bee which will arive in next weekend. I'd just like to ask the group for key pieces of information on setting up this new hive based on their personal experiance.

I also wired up several frames of drone foundation - a sheet for each of my hives to be used as a Verroa collection point. I was wondering if there was any specific place in the order of frames that folks would recommend placing it to maximize it's effectiveness - in being drawn out and then filled by the queen.

I know much of this has been touched upon before, so if you would prefer to email me directly to reduce band width, please feel free to do so.

Thanks -

Martin

[Michael Bush]

From my experience the queen WANTS to lay drone and if you have no queen excluder and put the drone foudnation in the top super, she will still run up and lay it full and then return to the brood nest. If you want an optimum place for it, I'd put it second from one of the walls of the brood chamber she's laying in. The outside one may not be layed in, they may store honey in it, but the next one in is a natural place they would build drone anyway if they were drawing their own comb without foundation.

[odfrank]

You better be prompt about removing that drone brood before the drones hatch. I have seen hives bizarrely full of drones from just one bad comb, not to mention what can come a sheet of drone foundation. Combs drawn in a brood chamber often have a substantial amount of drone comb. A good deal of the success of modern beekeeping comes from making the queen lay on an abnormally high amount of worker comb and the unnaturally high population of workers that comes from doing so. I have several times found hives so overburdened by drones that they can't produce a surplus.

My partner once used my deep super of pure drone comb as a brood chamber by mistake. We couldn't stop laughing about it for months after seeing the sight of a hive of almost all drones.