Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

I have been doing some studying on the subject of drones. From what I have learned, if accurate, drones which fly from a certain hive may not all go to the same drone area hangout, but instead some, may go to different drone areas. Not all drones from a pitcular hive will all go to the same drone hangout looking for a queen. Now these drones stay in these drone areas for a certain amount of time and then after a period of time need (refueling). Is this accurate thus far? If so, the question. Will the drones fly back to their home hives, or, will they, do they, are they allowed, to stop by more convenient, closer hives for (refusing)? Again are drones known to frequent closer hives for refueling? I can guess on this, my guess would be no. But I would like to know for sure. If anyone here can answer this question it would be much appreciated!
Thanks ,
Phillip Hall "Ben Framed"

Most drones go back to theire own hives, but some drones drift and even stay in other colonys

Mr. Ben.  Having raised my own queens for a few seasons now, I can safely say that there is no
limit on which hive a drone can refuel.   Drones can freely come and go basically into any hives that it
can.  Of course, they can orient to their home hive too.  And prefer to see their own queen than another hive's.

Totally 100 percent agreed with Beepro and Robirot.

Mr. Ben, I have colored bees, yellow Cordovan and black carni and regular striped itialians. Each produces distinctly different looking drones.  I see black drones in my Cordovan hive, yellow Cordovan drones in the black carni hive and simple stated: the drones go into any hive they please.

Can a typical drone approach an africian hive?  I don?t know.  I do know africian drones will breed with typical queens.  Jim can tell ya all about that, africian drones breeding with typical queens.  Jim told me a honey bee hive in the ground is most likely a cross of africian with local queens.  This is in Floridia.

Thanks robirot, beepro, and stinger13. I appreciate y'all sharing this information. This is really interesting to me and unlocks my thinking even further. I'm going to relax a bit, sit back and absorb the information on this and the possible spin offs knowing these new truths. Again thanks to each of you.
Phillip Hall "Ben Framed"

Ben, I'm going to take it a bit farther. Drones are like young men bar hopping. They go from bar 'hive' to bar "hive' on their excursions looking for the young ladies. A drone may end up several miles from home before his travels end. He will be welcomed and fed in any hive he visits.

Quote from: iddee on December 29, 2018, 10:16:01 PM
Ben, I'm going to take it a bit farther. Drones are like young men bar hopping. They go from bar 'hive' to bar "hive' on their excursions looking for the young ladies. A drone may end up several miles from home before his travels end. He will be welcomed and fed in any hive he visits.

Appreciate your chiming in iddee, and for even more clarification!! Makes perfect sense, especially putting in those terms !!! 😊😁
Thanks, Phillip

+3 to above, as the others have said.  By observation of knowing different coloured colonies and drones in the beeyard. The drones appear to go into whatever hive they chose whenever they chose. It is surmised that:  Most are bar-hopping, as iddee so rightly put it. Some are scouting for where the virgins are coming due soon. Some are refuelling. Some are just looking for a new place where they are better pampered to hang out for a few days.

I have setup dedicated hives of mostly drone comb to emerge. I have observed the drones orient to their own hive, and return to it. Though that definitely does not last long, a few days to a week at most. Once all the big boys are ready to play, they leave home. In short order most of the drones are gone from that hive and those drones are seen spread out inside every hive across the apiary and nearby apiaries.

What is really interesting is an isolated yard of mating nucs. Not a single drone brood cell or comb put anywhere in the nucs when they were setup. Yet, once the queen cells emerge and the virgins are getting ripe to fly - it is common to see 5 to 10 drones that have found their way into each mating nuc and are just hanging out, for days, seemingly waiting for the queen to go out to play.

Drones are not refused until towards ending of the season when the colony is shifting into winter conservation mode. Then they are unceremoniously chewed up and tossed out off of the landing board. ... Not all of them are thrown out. The hive does keep some, though very few, and maintains them through the winter.

Glad to see you are studying drones, Ben. Time well invested.  Having an in depth knowledge about the big boys is just as important as knowing as much as possible about the queen.

Thank you also Mr Claude for the input and education, also for the kind words of encouragement!  So appreciated!!
Phillip Hall

  Thanks each of you, Mr Claude, Mr Van, iddee, beepro, and robirot,  I will share some thoughts with you concerning this subject. I am thinking, if I seriously want to consider AI or II Queens rearing, then the seriousness of the choice of the drone is very important in my way of thinking.  From the studies that I have done on this matter, and may I add I feel that I have only scratched the surface, have found the donor drone genes present the nature (temperament) in the new queens offspring. The new queens offsprings gene traits are more of other qualities such as grooming, house keeping etc.  Is this basically correct? I am thinking that I learned this from Bro Adams studies at Buckfast. But don't quote me on this because I have taken in much information in the last few months. 
  Correct or not, if I, you, Michael Palmer or anyone else desire to raise their queens by AI or now sometimes called II, then more has to be done than simply catching drones as they are coming into a hive, or catching them in a drone trap. if the specified genetics, from a particular hive are truly sought after.
  Thanks to each of you and the information that you all have provided in the above posts, show that simply catching drones randomly at a particular hive does not guarantee that this is actually the drone that is representing this particular hive? When I say more needs to be considered and done, I mean, to know for sure that the drones that are chosen for II purposes MUST be drones that are truly 100 percent, from the hive in which the desired qualities, (genetics) are correctly taken and not some random drone form some other hive from who knows where, which might have stopped in for a visit!? Correct?
  Now another question, how will we accomplish this? I will ask each of you, and anyone else for that matter who would like to chime in. Here are some of my thoughts, could we, can we, simply use capped drone, form a comb which is in the hive that we desire to breed to our new selected soon to be virgin queens, who, at the right timing, will soon be a reality.  Now, add this carefully selected drone comb to what? Well, what about an incubator, a drone incubator if you will, Just as some use an incubator for the hatching out of their queens. If we have a controlled environment for our drones to be hatched, and are successful in their emerging, then the next step is introducing these drones back to the hives in-order for the drones to be taken care of until they are of age of breeding?  Is this possible? Has this been done? If it is possible, then when hatched, emerged, we can mark the drones and therefore know for sure, 100 percent, that these marked drones did for sure, come form the desired hive of our choice for breeding purposes.
  What are your thoughts? Please share your wisdom.

Thanks, Phillip Hall

Quote from: Ben Framed on December 30, 2018, 02:36:07 AM
Now another question, how will we accomplish this?

If I wanted to make sure the drones were from a certain hive, I would just put a queen excluder on top of the hive and pull frames with drone brood and place them in a box above it.  Once hatched they would be trapped in the top box.  This will only work with a bottom entrance. 

Quote from: cao on December 30, 2018, 02:57:21 AM

Quote from: Ben Framed on December 30, 2018, 02:36:07 AM
Now another question, how will we accomplish this?

If I wanted to make sure the drones were from a certain hive, I would just put a queen excluder on top of the hive and pull frames with drone brood and place them in a box above it.  Once hatched they would be trapped in the top box.  This will only work with a bottom entrance.

And we could take this top box into a restricted flying area, a small screened in area, porch if you will, that will have the bees excluded from the outside and kept with in our grasp if they escape once the box is opened? Then easily re-caught? Thanks Cao, I was editing some of my post and was thinking of excluders  when you posted this and we are thinking similar thoughts! I credit you for this thought Sir!  Thank you so much for posting!! I will exclude my edited line on my post about excluders.
Phillip

A couple of problems come to mind with the incubator idea. New drones depend ALOT on the bees. Even at emergence. A bee is left to fend for itself to emerge from the cell whereas a drone is are heavily aided, unable to emerge without bee assistance.  Secondly, newly emerged drones need ALOT of immediate feed and grooming attention which comes from the bees. Drones also do not feed themselves. Therefore, I would completely rule out the incubator idea for drones. It would fail spectacularly. They would not survive. The drones need bees, the -incubator- has to be a strong hive full of healthy young bees.

I prepare a dedicated hive, strong of mostly nurse bees, much like a queen cell builder but is queenrite. This receives the choice selected capped drone comb nearing emergence. I sometimes label the hive -THE BARRACKS- for fun (and the kids) so it is known which one in the yard has all the drones in it. That hive looks after them and in a couple weeks the drones are out bar-hopping between the other hives. Unless restocked, it does not take long for the drone population in that hive to be near completely depleted and self distributed amongst the other hives in the yard.

On the AI QA/QC idea - Consider that the drones take quite awhile to mature before they become fertile and actually start to fly. I believe the literature says 14 days after emergence before they will even attempt to leave the hive, fly. I could support that, having seen drones hang out in The Barracks hive for quite a long while being tended to and developing. (though I have never date tracked them).  Therefore, an opportunity is if you are tracking your drones on a calendar as precisely as you are tracking the queens, it is not much of a step to go into The Barracks hive at 3 to 5 days after emergence and paint mark all the drones you can catch. It is good practice!  Then some 15 to 20 days later when your queens are ready for AI you can go into any of your other hive(s) and catch a bunch of the marked drones. They will be in all of the nearby hives.

Be mindful of the dates and resources as you develop your plans. The bees expend tremendous resources and a long considereable time to rear drones.  Your drone rearing effort needs to be concerted and to start a full month before starting queens.

OR you can buy an island somewhere that is 20 miles from anything in any direction and setup your apiary there and let them all freely frolic about.

Hope that helps!

@ TheHoneyPump. Thanks Mr Claude, it does help tremendously! I like the idea of the  (Barracks) in this type of situation. This will certinally serve the purpose.
Thanks, Phillip

Taking these thought a step further. Just for fun and educational purposes. A person, beekeeper, living further south of the rest of us, let's say South Texas for an example, or even further south as in Mexico or some of the other Southern Countries knows to be areas where Africanized bees are known to reside. What reason should a person, using the practices described, not be able to raise their own queens, with confidence, through the AI methods mentioned above? Should this beekeeper not be 💯 percent happy in the results if the proper steps as Mr Claude described are followed? Shouldn't this beekeeper fully expect to have the gentlest of hives even if this beekeeper was located in the heart of Africanized Bee country as long as the proper type drone and queens were selected and AI or II mated?
Thanks, Phillip Hall

Ben,
The answer is yes, you can raise gentle queens in the south using II. You just have to keep your drones and queens marked as mentioned above. You do not want to use an Africanized free loading drone that you pulled out of your hive.
During Beefest 2018, we went to Bobsims house to do splits on his top bar hive. When we walked into the back yard it looked like one of his hives was swarming. It was not until we looked real close at the bees that we learned that they were all drones coming back into just one hive. There were way too many drones to come from one hive. I strongly suspect that there was a drone congragation area very close by and this hive may have had a virgin queen in it.
Jim

Very interesting Jim! Thanks for your input.
Phillip Hall

Jim: You do not want to use an Africanized free loading drone that you pulled out of your hive.

Oh man, Jim, 100 percent agreed.  An africian drone would create a night mare.

Mr. Ben, you mentioned a screen area.  I have seen pics of huge screened areas, like 18 ft high by 18 ft in width; they did not work for queen mating purposes.  I don?t know all the details, how many drones, temps,,, the author was just stating screened areas were unseccessful for matings and showed pics of attempts.

Van, I think he just meant avoiding escapes, like when I carry a queen into a bathroom to move her from a mitten to a cage. It's easier to catch them again in a small area if they get away.

Quote from: iddee on December 30, 2018, 04:04:00 PM
Van, I think he just meant avoiding escapes, like when I carry a queen into a bathroom to move her from a mitten to a cage. It's easier to catch them again in a small area if they get away.

  Thanks iddee for clarification, and yes Sir you nailed it. That is exactly what I meant. Iwill add, I  like your idea of the queen situation in the bathroom. Good idea!  My family probably wouldn't mind that either, but my wife would probably want to commit murder if I let a bunch of drones get loose!!  Ah haa haa ha
  Since Mr Claude pointed out drones wouldn't be flying until old enough would probably be the best bet, just leave them in the hive and mark them there. Along with incorporating Cao's idea of excluders and not so much to keep the selected drones in, but to make sure undesired drones do not enter and become mixed with the desired drones?

I would think that for marking a large amount of drones quickly at all that you would need is a stool next to the hive and a good dabber.  Pul a frame and support on your lap.  Get the dabber out, .... just like marking the card at the bingo hall.  Dab dab dab dab dab.  They do not move much nor quickly when they are young. 

As for handling queens in a small space for fear of her flying away, an extra veil in the beeyard works really well.  Put the veil on top of a nearby hive. Put a cage and marking tool inside the veil.  Catch queeny your hand or a queen catching clip. Put both hands inside the veil.  Do your thing marking her or/and caging.  If she escapes your grasp, she is contained in the veil and easy to recatch.  If you are doing many, you may consider building a small screen box with two hand holes on one side just for this purpose.

Keep it simple.

My queen mitt, thank you ID for clarification.

[attachment=0][/attachment]

On top of yellow nuc, on top of styrofoam hive.

Mr Ben. In the II business we have a term for young drones, to young to mate. They are called fuzzies due to all the hair on thorax.  Fuzzies are to young and cannot be properly inverted.  So if you grab a fuzzie by mistake, no problem they don?t work, they only partially invert.  After 10 days, HP say 14, close enough, the drones invert easily.

Beepro made a comment about killing drones, so noted, however when I think how a drone dies naturally, I have no problem with a quick kill inverting method.  Head first, then throax and almost all invert properly, unless to young.  The invert method is easy, maintaining sterile conditions is not easy.
Blessings

You all are adding more and more good stuff here! Loads of good information!! I appreciate y'all adding your thoughts, ideas,  and experiences, on this subject. These should benefit the Beekeeper as well as the bee 🐝 Thanks all!
Phillip

I do it this way:
For drone rearing hives i run them all foundation except for two frames foundationless. Here they build drone comb. Closee upper entrance.

Drones need 42-45 days to fully develop. At X-10 i add a Queen excluder between the bottom board and the lower bottom box, and remove the the two drone frames and give them new empty frames. Many drones will be in these frames, search for the queen if she is not in these frames, just brush the bees off.

In the drone donating hives i use 3/4 foundation and add them in the early spring over an excluder. The last quarter will be filled with drone comb. At X-4 i put them into the brood chambers. At X, again remove the drone frames from the drone rearing colonies and give them new empty frames.

Transfer the frames from the drone donation colonies, into the super of the rearing colony over a excluder.
At X+15 again remove the drone frames from the brood box, same at X+30.

At X+35 i open the top entrance, from 6-7 pm. Same at X+40.
These way the drones can fly freely and habe a chance to defecate and are ready for harvest. But since they fly so late they won't mix up with drones from other colonies, those allready stopped flying. Also since the top entrance is normally always closed, you have no drones waiting here to enter the hive.

Now you have about 5 days for harvesting the drones and allready got a good mix of drones from different mothers.

Robirot, question?  Do you consider X to be 24 days,drone hatch, or the mature drone 44 days?  I just want to be clear.  Your adding the queen excluder prior to drone hatching or adding the excluder prior to drones capable of flight?  Thank you for your input.
Blessings

X is the day where you add the drone eggs, into the super of the rearing colony.

The excluder on the bottom board is, added 10 days before this. Here you can also use a drone excluder (5,2 mm).

The reason for this excluder is to make sure, you tot no problems with drift from other colonies (you can wonder how much drift you can get, if a colony is nearly free of drones).

The excluder on top of the brood chamber must bee a Queen excluder. It can be added at day X or before. All drones allready beeing in the super will be dead, when the wanted drones are ready. I add it earlier, since i run all supers with excluder, and also i always use rearing colony, which queen is a sister of the drone donating colonies.

The excluder in top of the brood chamber should be built in to an eke or run a shallow  super below it. The reason for this, is that it is nearly impossible to always keep the excluder safely fixed to that box during inspections. If lose it, you can lose your full drone poppulation in seconds. You also could use a plastic excluder and fix it permanently onto one super.

Robirot, I like it. Thank you.

I use colored drones, Cordovan so catch and selection is easy.  However, I have an Italian hive showing prospects, still being evaluated.  Your method would secure the linage of the Italian drones, if I decide to use them.
Blessings

Robirot: In the drone donating hives i use 3/4 foundation and add them in the early spring over an excluder. The last quarter will be filled with drone comb.

I hate to show my ignorance but unless I ask I will not know.  What is {3/4 foundation}???  Is that a super frame, 7 1/4 inch or so,,,, or 3 or 4 foundation frames.
Blessings

If I were going to use 3/4 sheet of foundation to get the last 1/4 drone, I would just insert a drawn shallow or medium frame. She would fill the frame with worker eggs and they would draw a straight comb under it on the bottom bar. They would draw it to a normal depth frame. I have several frames like that in hives now.

For consideration:

For near 100% drone frame to be pulled and moved into another hive, aka The Barracks, the green one piece plastic drone frames work very very very well.

For keeping a healthy ongoing drone to bee ratio in "regular" hives, I cut the bottom 1/3 of foundation out of the black one piece plastic frames. Just cut out a full length window out of the bottom 1/3rd of the foundation, leaving the bottom bar and side bars. The bees will fill that in with all drone, and a number of queen cups too. Every hive has ONE (1), only one, of these frames in the lower box in the #7 position. This works great for me as I run all deeps in absolutely everything and all black plastic frames in the brood chambers. To mark the frame that has the cutout, and subsequently will have drone comb on the lower part of it, I simply put a short flat head screw into the centre of the top bar of the frame.  Some day I may switch those out to white plastic for quicker identification.

Quote from: iddee on December 31, 2018, 05:42:58 PM
If I were going to use 3/4 sheet of foundation to get the last 1/4 drone, I would just insert a drawn shallow or medium frame. She would fill the frame with worker eggs and they would draw a straight comb under it on the bottom bar. They would draw it to a normal depth frame. I have several frames like that in hives now.
[/quote

Oh I see:  Yes, thank you ID...  I also have placed a super frame in a deep and just as you stated.  The bees fill in the bottom of the super to make new super frame the size of a deep.  I discovered this by accident years ago, when I added a full super frame that full of capped honey to a deep for feed as the particular hive needed food for winter.  To my surprise the following spring the super was waxed out to the size of a deep......  thanks again.
Blessings

Quote from: TheHoneyPump on December 31, 2018, 05:57:00 PM
For consideration:

For near 100% drone frame to be pulled and moved into another hive, aka The Barracks, the green one piece plastic drone frames work very very very well.

For keeping a healthy ongoing drone to bee ratio in "regular" hives, I cut the bottom 1/3 of foundation out of the black one piece plastic frames. Just cut out a full length window out of the bottom 1/3rd of the foundation, leaving the bottom bar and side bars. The bees will fill that in with all drone, and a number of queen cups too. Every hive has one of these frames in the lower box in the #7 position. This works great for me as I run all deeps in absolutely everything and all black plastic frames in the brood chambers. To mark the frame that has the cutout, and subsequently will have drone comb on the lower part of it, I simply put a short flat head screw into the centre of the top bar of the frame.  Some day I may switch those out to white plastic for quicker identification.

Thank you HP, a good method to know.  I like the use of black foundation for brood, makes seeing eggs much easier.  I am trying to slowly switch to black plasta cell for deeps.  I do have green drone frames, waxed out and ready for spring.

Speaking of Spring, just you wait.  Every year the Florida beeks post a new topic: flowers blooming, any day now....  Makes me so anxious I can hardly stand it.  In my area, March is when there are flowers for the bees, I wished January.
Blessings

@ Van .  I have tried sending this to you several times via PM.I have not been successful.  So I will try here.
https://youtu.be/jRCfY3_GauQ

Mr. Ben, did you notice how gentle those bees were.  Impressive honey bees.

Try this link:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3vPV_WeQxV8#searching

Did you notice the needle is moved forward after insertion, this is to by pass the value fold or does not work.

Blessings

That is very interesting Stinger.
I thought they had to a special maneuver to insert the seaman. It did not seem like they did anything special.
Jim

Quote from: Stinger13 on December 31, 2018, 06:29:20 PM

Quote from: TheHoneyPump on December 31, 2018, 05:57:00 PM
For consideration:

For near 100% drone frame to be pulled and moved into another hive, aka The Barracks, the green one piece plastic drone frames work very very very well.

For keeping a healthy ongoing drone to bee ratio in "regular" hives, I cut the bottom 1/3 of foundation out of the black one piece plastic frames. Just cut out a full length window out of the bottom 1/3rd of the foundation, leaving the bottom bar and side bars. The bees will fill that in with all drone, and a number of queen cups too. Every hive has one of these frames in the lower box in the #7 position. This works great for me as I run all deeps in absolutely everything and all black plastic frames in the brood chambers. To mark the frame that has the cutout, and subsequently will have drone comb on the lower part of it, I simply put a short flat head screw into the centre of the top bar of the frame.  Some day I may switch those out to white plastic for quicker identification.

Thank you HP, a good method to know.  I like the use of black foundation for brood, makes seeing eggs much easier.  I am trying to slowly switch to black plasta cell for deeps.  I do have green drone frames, waxed out and ready for spring.

Speaking of Spring, just you wait.  Every year the Florida beeks post a new topic: flowers blooming, any day now....  Makes me so anxious I can hardly stand it.  In my area, March is when there are flowers for the bees, I wished January.
Blessings

For standard wired frames I sometimes use a shallow-foundation for a jumbo-frame.
As we got a lot of natural comb anyway, these half foundation-frames give the bees the needed boost with pre-built-comb (the foundation) and they can add underneath what they consider good. If a flow is on in late summer or quick feeding is required, this is a nice compromise.
If added in spring, drone comb will be raised mostly, as mentioned above.

THP: Do you cut out drone-brood?

I do not cut out or cull drone brood.  I experimented with the drone brood mite trapping method for one season.  I/we quickly abandoned the method altogether. Never took it any farther nor towards the larger operation. Reason is The season here is very short and intense. A tremendous amount of energy and resources go into raising drones. To remove and throw out that effort by the bees is inefficient and detrimental in the big picture of what the high goals are in a limited timeline. We simply cannot afford to waste any of the bees effort, time, or resources; nor our own.  Instead, I/we encourage and allow the drones in limited but balanced quantity by providing one of the modified frames mentioned in each hive. ( separately there are main drone hives, The Barracks to support queen rearing ops. ) Experience says the hives have to have some drones to be balanced and healthy.  They are not just free loaders. Varroa is controlled by a seasonal program of other methods. Regular planned drone brood removal is not part of my IPM program.

That said. Varroa is spot checked by forking the drone brood. The Drone brood is cut out only if a heavy infestation is found. Such finding rare exception.

This video link is ok in quality and information. Repetitive on some points but rightly so as those points repeated are important. Is consistent with the rest of the discussion here. 
https://youtu.be/_bEcIyZ9jmg

Quote from: TheHoneyPump on January 01, 2019, 05:13:42 AM
I do not cut out or cull drone brood.  I experimented with the drone brood mite trapping method for one season.  I/we quickly abandoned the method altogether. Never took it any farther nor towards the larger operation. Reason is The season here is very short and intense. A tremendous amount of energy and resources go into raising drones. To remove and throw out that effort by the bees is inefficient and detrimental in the big picture of what the high goals are in a limited timeline. We simply cannot afford to waste any of the bees effort, time, or resources; nor our own.  Instead, I/we encourage and allow the drones in limited but balanced quantity by providing one of the modified frames mentioned in each hive. ( separately there are main drone hives, The Barracks to support queen rearing ops. ) Experience says the hives have to have some drones to be balanced and healthy.  They are not just free loaders.

That said. Varroa is checked by spot check forking the drone brood. The Drone brood is cut out only if a heavy infestation is found. Such finding rare exception. Varroa is controlled by a seasonal program of other methods. Regular planned drone brood removal is not part of my IPM program.

This video link is ok in quality and information. Repetitive on some points but rightly so as those points repeated are important. Is consistent with the rest of the discussion here. 
https://youtu.be/_bEcIyZ9jmg

THP: You tell as I expected. I don?t cut drone-brood for the same reasons. Also, the effect is not as high as is usually told, I think. If I find drone-brood easiyl accessable in colonies I really don`t want to give on genes, I take it. But that occassion is rare.
For the frames: As I got very high bottoms and switched from Jumbo and Langstroth deeps to Jumbos only, I had the frames mixed for a season. hoo boy was I glad when I had all deep frames fished out. I spent felt DAYS cutting back excess comb and dealing with the mess. Never again will I put a wrong frame into an unfitting box.

Quote from: Stinger13 on December 31, 2018, 10:53:39 PM
Try this link:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3vPV_WeQxV8#searching

Did you notice the needle is moved forward after insertion, this is to by pass the value fold or does not work.

Blessings

There are two ways of inseminating Queens. This is the Schley style tool with stinger hook. For this you need to move the needle to bypass the valvefold.
If pliers are used to grab the sting, it can be manipulated so that you can go straight in.



I also don' cut drones, it costs the colonies energy and drones are part of a hive. A hive with drones is a lot calmer.

But the main reason is, that that it is just to moch work.


If you cut drones for varoa removal, you need to cut only frames that get used a second time now. In frames freshly drawn, a lot less (i mean was about 10 times) mites are found. Some scents of old brood attract the mite and tell them, this is a brood cell.

Quote from: robirot on January 01, 2019, 06:55:00 AM

Quote from: Stinger13 on December 31, 2018, 10:53:39 PM
Try this link:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3vPV_WeQxV8#searching

Did you notice the needle is moved forward after insertion, this is to by pass the value fold or does not work.

Blessings

There are two ways of inseminating Queens. This is the Schley style tool with stinger hook. For this you need to move the needle to bypass the valvefold.
If pliers are used to grab the sting, it can be manipulated so that you can go straight in.



I also don' cut drones, it costs the colonies energy and drones are part of a hive. A hive with drones is a lot calmer.

But the main reason is, that that it is just to moch work.


If you cut drones for varoa removal, you need to cut only frames that get used a second time now. In frames freshly drawn, a lot less (i mean was about 10 times) mites are found. Some scents of old brood attract the mite and tell them, this is a brood cell.

sounds reasonalbe. about the used drone comb.

I use a loc device with forceps, pliers.

[attachment=0][/attachment]

Stinger,
Are the forceps hand held? I do not see them in the picture.
I wish you could do a presentation on showing us how you do this at BeeFest 2019.
Jim

Question on throughout. How many II queens can be done in day?  A full day, a 6am-6pm work day. Not a multiplied per hour rate. When all steps in the process are completed start to finish in a day, how many queens can be done. Things like setup, retrieval, II itself, cleanup, storage, record keeping etc are all included in a work day. 

Also what is the failure rate? There must be losses.  What are the factors of the losses? What is the percentage losses?

Quote from: TheHoneyPump on January 01, 2019, 01:36:17 PM
Question on throughout. How many II queens can be done in day?  A full day, a 6am-6pm work day.

Hoe many ppl? Harvesting drones yourself?

Isemination teams do 400+ Queens a day.
2 or 3 ppl collecting sperm, 1 person inseminating, 1-2 ppl doing all the work besides that (Getting drones, catching and releasing queens, marking them).

If you are doing all alone 20 Queens are good. If you are doing it alone the bottleneck is seither collecting of semen or all the other stuff that has to be observed.
If you do it alone, best is to do one evening of preparation, then one day of collecting semen and gassing all queens for the first time. The next morning inseminating all queens and cleanup.
If you go this way, the Harbo syringe comes helpes a lot.

Quote from: sawdstmakr on January 01, 2019, 10:37:25 AM
Stinger,
Are the forceps hand held? I do not see them in the picture.
I wish you could do a presentation on showing us how you do this at BeeFest 2019.
Jim

Jim, the arm on the right has a hooked end, those are forceps.  I?ll take a close up for you and post.

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Forceps.  I open and extended the forceps to demonstrate, for clarity.  They are tiny:  each hook on the forcep is as thin as paper.
Blessings

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Another pic.

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My carbon dioxide set up, mounted to a ring stand, nothing fancy, inexpensive aquarium co2 device with bubbler so I can count one bubble per second to put the queen to sleep.  The carbon dioxide is supplied by the 8 gram cartridges made for pellet guns or aquariums.  A simple inexpensive device that works great.  All available on Amazon.

A typical carbon dioxide device cost hundreds: Victor gage and co2 tank.  The above device is but a fraction of the cost.
Blessings . 

@ TheHoneyPump
I really like the queen excluder cage that Mike uses for encasing the whole green drone comb-frame. I didn't know that such a thing exist! Awesome devise!

@ Stinger13
Very nice set up Mr Van. You are set to go.  Good idea on the aquarium co2 cartages for the set up.

@ robirot Thanks for the detailed explanation of how many queens can be handled in a time period as ask by THP. Good Job!

@ sawdstmakr
You ask Mr Van "Are the forceps hand held? I do not see them in the picture.''
   Good question and thanks Mr Van for the good answer and picture that followed.

Also form Jim . '' That is very interesting Stinger.
I thought they had to a special maneuver to insert the seaman. It did not seem like they did anything special.''
   Good video Mr Van!

@ blackforest beekeeper
You said,  ''There are two ways of inseminating Queens. This is the Schley style tool with stinger hook. For this you need to move the needle to bypass the valvefold.
If pliers are used to grab the sting, it can be manipulated so that you can go straight in.''  Thanks for adding this information.

You all are collectively adding to my education, on this subject and I am sure many others as well both now and in the future who read this topic. Thanks to each of you!

Phillip Hall
                             

I never contributed to insemination as I have never done this.

Quote from: blackforest beekeeper on January 02, 2019, 02:59:52 AM
I never contributed to insemination as I have never done this.

You said,  ''There are two ways of inseminating Queens. This is the Schley style tool with stinger hook. For this you need to move the needle to bypass the valvefold.
If pliers are used to grab the sting, it can be manipulated so that you can go straight in.''  Thanks for adding this information.

Yet you turn around and say, " I have never contributed to insemination as I have never done this" Hum, maybe from now on, prehaps, I should consider everything you say with a grain of salt? Hum 😁

Quote from: Ben Framed on January 02, 2019, 06:28:40 AM

Quote from: blackforest beekeeper on January 02, 2019, 02:59:52 AM
I never contributed to insemination as I have never done this.

You said,  ''There are two ways of inseminating Queens. This is the Schley style tool with stinger hook. For this you need to move the needle to bypass the valvefold.
If pliers are used to grab the sting, it can be manipulated so that you can go straight in.''  Thanks for adding this information.

Yet you turn around and say, " I have never contributed to insemination as I have never done this" Hum, maybe from now on, prehaps, I should consider everything you say with a grain of salt? Hum 😁

Phillip,
BFB only quoted Robirot about that and said that it sounded reasonable. He did not say it.
See post 41.
Jim

Quote from: Ben Framed on January 02, 2019, 06:28:40 AM

Quote from: blackforest beekeeper on January 02, 2019, 02:59:52 AM
I never contributed to insemination as I have never done this.

You said,  ''There are two ways of inseminating Queens. This is the Schley style tool with stinger hook. For this you need to move the needle to bypass the valvefold.
If pliers are used to grab the sting, it can be manipulated so that you can go straight in.''  Thanks for adding this information.

Yet you turn around and say, " I have never contributed to insemination as I have never done this" Hum, maybe from now on, prehaps, I should consider everything you say with a grain of salt? Hum

I said that about the needle and valvefold, not blackforrestbeekeeper.

Whoops, My mistake and my apology Blackforest. 😁 Thanks Jim and robirot for clearing that up !!
But Blackforest you do contribute with your comments and questions. Thanks for those just as well. 
Phillip Hall

sorry. I was un-clear.
I thought, the idea that mites would prefer used drone-comb to freshly built one, sounds reasonable to me.
I don`t have any opinions or knowledge about insemination.

Quote from: blackforest beekeeper on January 02, 2019, 07:11:26 AM
sorry. I was un-clear.
I thought, the idea that mites would prefer used drone-comb to freshly built one, sounds reasonable to me.
I don`t have any opinions or knowledge about insemination.

Thanks for your kindness and graciousness  Blackforest.  It was my stupidly. that was the problem.
Phillip Hall   "Ben Framed" Or may I add, this time Framed myself !! 😁

Quote from: TheHoneyPump on January 01, 2019, 01:36:17 PM
Question on throughout. How many II queens can be done in day?  A full day, a 6am-6pm work day. Not a multiplied per hour rate. When all steps in the process are completed start to finish in a day, how many queens can be done. Things like setup, retrieval, II itself, cleanup, storage, record keeping etc are all included in a work day. 

Also what is the failure rate? There must be losses.  What are the factors of the losses? What is the percentage losses?

I texted an expert, Sue Colby and reply was: 50 queens a day is a reasonable rate for II, all things optimized.  The biggest time consuming factor is collection condition of drones and obtaining the semon.  The focus is on care, not quantity, so all things considered 50 queens a day.

Failure rate depends on the skill level of the individual.

Mr Van, I am confused of who is saying what😊😁. Are you saying that you use  forceps to grab hold of the stinger in order to move it out-of-the-way? If so how do you know how tightly to grab the stinger with the  forceps in order to get the job done and without damaging the stinger itself?
Thanks , Phillip

Mr. Ben.  The forceps are spring closed.  It takes force to open the forceps, they close naturally due to the spring and have the correct tension to hold a stinger.

I use forceps to hold the stinger.  The stinger is position to expose the oviduct.  I could also use a stinger loop instead of a forcep.  The loop works just as well, but my personal preference is the forcep.

Quote from: Stinger13 on January 03, 2019, 10:21:32 AM
Mr. Ben.  The forceps are spring closed.  It takes force to open the forceps, they close naturally due to the spring and have the correct tension to hold a stinger.

I use forceps to hold the stinger.  The stinger is position to expose the oviduct.  I could also use a stinger loop instead of a forcep.  The loop works just as well, but my personal preference is the forcep.

Thanks Mr Van

On the drone subject, I don't use top entrances and am wondering if drones use the entrance above the qx?

No, not if they were born in that hive. The queen excluder keeps the queen from laying drone eggs above it and they would have to exit through the bottom entrance. Since they orient to the bottom entrance, they will return to it. Drones from other hives may find and use the top entrance.
Jim

Quote from: Stinger13 on December 31, 2018, 10:53:39 PM
Try this link:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3vPV_WeQxV8#searching

Did you notice the needle is moved forward after insertion, this is to by pass the value fold or does not work.

Blessings

Mr Van,  Thanks for the video, I have watched it several time.  This is the best up close video that I have seen on this!! Thank you for posting ...
Ben