[Absinthe]

This year I want to give drone culling a try using the green frames. After a bunch of reading and watching videos and seeing several different and perhaps conflicting pieces of information I came up with a few questions:

1. At what point in the season should the green frame be introduced?
2. At what point in the season should the frame be completely eliminated?
3. Do I want to pull the frame when they start capping the drones, or should I be waiting until they are mostly capped? Or simply on a calendar time schedule of 3 weeks or 4 weeks?
4. Is it better to scrape the drone brood off the frames, or just freeze them and reintroduce them with the dead drone brood and let them clean them up?
5. Where is the best location for the drone frame?

I assume if I plan to travel or otherwise will not be around during the appropriate frame removal times that I need to simply pull the frame and replace it with a normal frame during that time period.

Is there a way to get any kind of counts from this process to determine the number of mites eliminated? When doing alcohol washes, is it any better/worse to grab the nurses from the green frames?

And just a strange though, Is there a point when I would want to be introducing drones into the surrounding areas where I would provide a nuc or other hive to move the frames into allowing them to hatch out?

 

[AR1]

No answers to your questions but interested. Last year I did extensive drone culling by inserting medium frames into my deep boxes. Every time I checked a hive I would pull those frames and remove any capped drone brood.

My opinion is that removing drone brood every 4 weeks is too late. The drone cycle from laid egg to hatching is shorter than that, and the first drones laid will get large numbers of mites, so those are the ones most necessary to remove.

I was lazy and short on time last year so did not do alcohol washes, but I did see large variations in the degree of mite infestations in the drone brood. Some of the hives had very few mites in drone brood all year. Others had lots at different times. I had a large die-off of my bees last fall. My sole surviving hive now is the one that I did NOT do drone removal on. Something I am thinking about!

 

[crofter]

I think I could probably search up the cost in terms of honey and nectar to produce a frame of drone brood
(but I am too lazy). Looking at it in those terms would tell you that it was very expensive for the colony. Expensive mite control unless your pay off is the mental satisfaction of not using alternatives.

I found by just scratching the cappings the bees discard a lot of the corpses just off the landing board. It smells, attracts hornets and ants. You can blow them out with either air or water spray nozzle but that messes up your glasses to say the least.

I randomly fill the tines of my uncapping fork where I see drone brood and check the pupae for mites. If you see no mites all is good. If you see many then I think you need to find an effective way of killing them

 

[msl]

6.25 pound not counting the wax costs
however in his study randy oliver didn't find an impact on honey production,but the "why" never got answered

 

[JWPalmer]

Absinthe, like your new avitar. Unless you plan on being TF and using drone culling as a means of mite control, raising drone brood to the capping stage is very expensive to the hive in terms of honey and bee production. If raising drones for the purpose of breeding, it is a different matter. Now is the time to install these frames since drone rearing is initiated prior to the flow commencing. Drone frames are best placed in positions 2 and 9, they are removed as soon as they are capped. If allowed to remain after 21 days, you run the risk of actually increasing the mite load in your hive. Freeze the frames and then reintroduce. No need to increase the bee's workload by having them draw even more drone comb. If hungry, they will eat the dead larvae instead of just removing them. You can leave the frames in all year but the bees will backfill the cells with honey as the season progresses.

 

[Gray Goose]

No answers to your questions but interested. Last year I did extensive drone culling by inserting medium frames into my deep boxes. Every time I checked a hive I would pull those frames and remove any capped drone brood.

My opinion is that removing drone brood every 4 weeks is too late. The drone cycle from laid egg to hatching is shorter than that, and the first drones laid will get large numbers of mites, so those are the ones most necessary to remove.

I was lazy and short on time last year so did not do alcohol washes, but I did see large variations in the degree of mite infestations in the drone brood. Some of the hives had very few mites in drone brood all year. Others had lots at different times. I had a large die-off of my bees last fall. My sole surviving hive now is the one that I did NOT do drone removal on. Something I am thinking about!

AR1

My sole surviving hive now is the one that I did NOT do drone removal on. Something I am thinking about!

non related event, don't over think it.