Drone comb management

[Beehaive]

How should one manage drone comb throughout the year? Should you remove it from the brood chamber once it has been capped and never return it? Is there ever a time to put it back into the brood chamber to encourage the queen to lay drones? is it ok to use in the honey supers once the flow is on? Should it all be removed for winter? What about in a NUC, can it be used to start a NUC?
Basically what are peoples management techniques for drone comb.

[BeeGhost]

From what I've read, you take the frame of capped drone brood, freeze it over night, scratch the cappings the next day and return it back to the hive for the workers to clean out and let the queen lay in the drone comb again. I have never done it so I can't say this from an experienced point of view.

I noticed in my hives that the drone comb was filled with stores for winter, so I imagine you could use it in the honey supers.

As far as putting it in a nuc, I probably wouldn't because you don't want an abundance of drones in a small colony like a nuc, then again I've never put a frame of drone comb in a nuc before either.

[AmericasBeekeeper]

Drone comb can be used to raise Varroa or draw them from the brood, to raise drones for queen mating, or for honey.
It is easiest to use two drone frames and alternate which is frozen, thawed and returned to the hive. Two days is much better as Varroa can survive residential freezers overnight. Scratching the frozen drones does not matter since workers remove wax as part of their job description. Occasionally they will remove the cap of queen cells just before emergence.

[psfred]

The queen doesn't automatically lay eggs in everything, including drone comb. The worker bees direct her, and typically hives will make a big crop of drones for swarm season, keep some around all spring and early summer, then raise a smaller batch in late summer early fall, I suspect for supercedures.

The rest of the time they use the drone comb for stores. In my hive last year, they drew out quite a bit of drone comb in the foundationless frames I put in, but only raised drones in some of it and put stores in the rest. We will see how things work out this year, as that hive didn't make it.

The use of drone comb to reduce varroa mites requires that you pull the drone comb while it's capped and kill of the drones by pulling them out or freezing them, then returning the comb to the hive to re-fill. Varroa mites preferentially infest drone cells, so doing this will kill the vast majority of them off in the spring. They won't make drones after a while, so there is no point in pulling it then.

Peter

[Beehaive]

Should you put one frame in the brood nest starting spring through fall? Or maybe all year round?

[jmgi]

If I get whole frames of newly drawn out drone comb near the center of the brood nest(I go foundationless in the brood nest)I will pull them and put them in the honey supers. I will let them have frames of mostly drone on the furthest two outside frames in the brood nest because they usually put honey and pollen in them anyways.

John

[squarepeg]

i got good drone comb by putting in foundationless frames in early spring, just as they were starting to brood up.

i culled the ones that had more mites, but left the ones with no mites or just a few mites. my intent was to let the drones from the mite resistant colonies be available for mating.

[MeriB]

How did you know which ones had more/any mites in them?

[squarepeg]

How did you know which ones had more/any mites in them?

i keep a small tweezers with me in my inspection kit. i use it mostly for killing small hive beetles, but also to pull out drone larvae and look for mites.

so far, i haven't had too much trouble with colonies not thriving or collapsing, and i rarely see a bee with deformed wings. i attribute this to buying bees derived from feral survivor stock.

for this reason, i have yet to do a proper mite count using an alcohol wash, but i did purchase the double plastic jar to do it with.

i might actually test a few hives next season, and send the results to randy oliver for his study on treatment free bees.

i did lose one hive this year, and that was to laying workers. it was in an outyard that i don't get to check often enough.

[wcubed]

We did a whole article on drone management. The only article that drew complimentary comments from editor Kim Flottum. It's archived in POV, this site.
Walt Wright

[buzz abbott]

We did a whole article on drone management. The only article that drew complimentary comments from editor Kim Flottum. It's archived in POV, this site.
Walt Wright

Walt, I'm probably just being stupid (again), but I can't find the article in POV nor with a search of 'drone management'

Yep, just being stupid. Found it after clicking on your name.

[arcowandbeegirl]

I am in central Arkansas. I tried drone comb management for varroa mite reduction. I did find it to be somewhat successfull. I put in one frame with drone foundation in it (brood box) in each hive. I did this when the hives started building up good for spring. I think it was late April. May should have put it in sooner. Then I would check back before the time of the drones hatching and if alot of cells were filled would remove. In the middle to late summer. I found that they werent using it for drone production but nectar storage instead. I removed the drone frames for the winter about 1 month ago. This is just my own experience. I was able to hold off the mites for a while longer. I did finally treat with Hopguard, but was able to wait a while longer.

[Michael Bush]

If I find a complete frame of drone in the middle of the brood nest I move it to the outside. That's the extent of my management of drone comb.