encouraging drone laying?

Put a feeder on them with the drone comb. Put the drone comb in the center of the broodnest. They should draw it out and queen should lay in it. Put on the feeder to simulate flow and get them to build, these are conditions they will raise drones in.

I would suggest doing it in last half of June when you pull off your honey. Then putting on a feeder will not spoil the honey crop and will inspire the colony to build for drones and queen rearing. It will also give you time to get the nucs built up for over wintering.

you dont need to raise extra drones- they will find HER. she is not programed to breed with her own sons anyway and will fly away to a "drone area" to get outside genes. all will be well without help, and has been for a long time good luck,mike

Great advice-thank you.

mike haney said:

you dont need to raise extra drones- they will find HER. she is not programed to breed with her own sons anyway and will fly away to a "drone area" to get outside genes. all will be well without help, and has been for a long time good luck,mike

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these outside genes can be a good thing in that these drones would have acclimatised themselves to your local that is if the queen is not already from local stock.

Depending on what your looking for, I pick a queen that has good traits, put one or two drone frames for her to lay in. This hive will be sacrificed in that I will not take the honey off but will make them produce drones for breeding purposes. Every queen you make can mate with as many as 20 drones. The drones have to be at least a few weeks old to mate. If you want 10 queens you can see that that can add up to many drones. Keep feedning this group of bees (hive) with one to one sugar. That is one cup water or pound of water to one cup or pound of sugar. This will make them think there is a flow on. You can add more water if you like just so it is deluted more and they will be working on that.
Take a look at this site and you may find more information
http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/

Good luck
Dan

How do you handle the issue of varroa in all the extra drone comb?

I have screened bottom boards. I do not use chemicals any more with my russian bees. I strickly let them work it out. I'm more into natural selection and the bees seem to be responding to my working them this way. It has taken me many years to get to this point. They still are not 100% but I'm hopeing within the next few years of selective breeding I will get there, also take the drone combs out from my hives that are not for production and freeze the sealed brood. Works in keeping the 'infection' down. I have moved away from chemicals since noticing problems with super seeding queens and loosing them.
Dan