Drone comb: Freeze or cut?

[TWall]

Next year I'm planning on putting in some foundationless frames in the brood chamber to get some drone comb drawn. I'm still not sure if I'll freeze it and then uncap and put back in the hive or cut it out. It seems like a waste of a resource to cut it out. But, it is a lot quicker to just cut it out.

I'm leaning towards freezing it. I can then choose to put it back in the brood chamber or put it above the QE and let them fill it with honey.

Tom

[dixiebooks]

Why not just get a supply of the plastic drone foundation? So far, my foundationless frames have been drawn in mostly worker cells. -james

[fish_stix]

Place a medium frame in the deep brood box. The bees will draw out comb on the bottom bar to match the depth of the other deep frames. Most of the new comb will be drone comb. For varroa control just use your hive tool and cut it off into a bucket for melting, after it's full of drone brood of course. The bees will quickly build it back. If you need drones for mating just leave it in there.

[kjbann]

Here is a link to Randy Oliver's page on the topic.
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/figh...al-tactics-ii/

I've mainly used the plastic drone frames with decent results. I pull them at 21 days, check for mites and freeze if there are many mites. The freezing is kind of a hassle since I only have our meat freezer to use. I don't like to put a frame right out of the freezer in next to a frame of brood and I seem to have a hard time remembering to take them out of the freezer in time to warm up. I've made a few frames like Randy does and I like the method, although I hate to make the bees draw comb each time. I also haven't got the timing down as well. With the plastic frames, I know that three weeks after a drawn frame from the freezer goes in, it will be time to pull it. It's amazing how fast the bees pull the dead larvae which have had the cappings scratched. I'll probably use both again this year and tend to want to move more to the Oliver method for simplicity. I put about a 15 degree vee on the bottom of the bar under the foundation to facilitate comb building. So far they have only built drone comb there. I have the frames in position 2 or 3. A side benefit has been that it seems like about 50% of the time, I can find the queen on the drone frame. Go figure. At present I have about a dozen hives and I try to do about half of them one weekend, and half the next.
Ken

[arcowandbeegirl]

Wow great info!! Thanks for the link to scientificbeekeeping!

[Michael Bush]

I do neither. I leave them.

[Katharina]

Just watched a video from the Florida University. In the video they stated having screened bottom boards will reduce mite population by 15%. Having one frame of drone cells you put in the freezer adds another 35-40%. A 50% reduction is pretty good, but it is labor intensive.