For those of you who have never seen the green drone frame filled and capped. I post the following pic for your viewing pleasure.
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:grin: awesome Mr. Van. That's a new one to me. Very nice looking Drone Frame. Thank you for sharing. :grin:
Is that for queen breeding or varroa control?
Queen breedings. This is the second drone frame from two different Cordovan queens. First frame was in late March, hatched mid April, mature by May 1. The drone frame pictured will be produce mature drones in mid June. Both Cordovan queens given green frame and purchased out of California last April, to reduce inbreeding when I graft from my 4 year old breeder queen, Alpha.
Quote from: iddee on May 30, 2020, 06:57:13 PM
Is that for queen breeding or varroa control?
My bees think they are for storing syrup. At least they drew it out so that is a plus.
Looks like the right ticket Mr Van.
Hi Van
Firstly thanks for posting. I have learnt a lot from your posts and comments. I respect your knowledge....and your Alpha is incredible!
Looking at that frame i have a question.
For me, the first signs of a hive preparing to swarm are excessive drone cells. So, when your raising drones for your mating yard do all those drones trigger the swarm impulse? If so how do you manage this?
Mr. North, from down Under, greetings. The drone frame does not promote swarming if there is plenty of room for the queen to lay. If a genetic grade hive prepares to swarm, that is, if I find queen cells, I find the queen and remove the queen. No queen, no swarm. Then the queen is placed in a new hive with brood, food and frames to lay and moved to a new location, which may be only a few feet away.
My genetic grade queens are placed in hives and the queen does not know where she is at so no way for the queen to return to the original hive. Support grade hives are allowed to swarm most of the time.
Cheers
Mr Van
Thanks for the clear explanation, greatly appreciated and makes sense.
I may need some guidance going into spring as I am planning on doing some grafting for the first time. I live in the tropics and have drones pretty much all year round. I had 5 out of 5 queens mated this Autumn from swarm cells, so my Aipary has somewhat expanded. Grafting has always fascinated me. I have done the homework. Made the nucs and ordered the gear....bring on Spring!
Nice pic. Will you place it in a hive where they can?t get out? So you know for sure they are those drones?
Quote from: William Bagwell on May 30, 2020, 10:02:02 PM
Quote from: iddee on May 30, 2020, 06:57:13 PM
Is that for queen breeding or varroa control?
My bees think they are for storing syrup. At least they drew it out so that is a plus.
William,
That means that your bees do not think they are strong enough to build the hive and feed the drones or the flow is slowing down and there is not enough food coming in to support the drones. Probably the first one.
Jim Altmiller
Quote from: Nock on May 31, 2020, 05:39:48 PM
Nice pic. Will you place it in a hive where they can?t get out? So you know for sure they are those drones?
Good Morning Mr. Nock. The drones in the pic are were laid by a genetic grade Cordovan queen. Thus all the drones will all be yellow. So no need to lock up the drones. I can tell which drones are Cordovan by the color, absence of black coloring. When I find drone brood in a support grade Italian bee hive, I destroy other drone brood. I later catch the drones by placing a queen excluder on the hive entrance. The captured yellow drones are then used for instrumental insemination to a virgin Cordovan queen.
For reference, simply stated, a Cordovan queen can only lay a Cordovan colored drone. Drones have no father, but do have a granddad.
Quoting Mr Van.
"For reference, simply stated, a Cordovan queen can only lay a Cordovan colored drone. Drones have no father, but do have a granddad."
Mr Van I have never given any thought to that, or until now do not 'remember' reading or hearing of this. But it makes perfect sense and is absolutely right and amazing. Thanks for the information.
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Gotcha. Makes sense. I took a pic yesterday of a frame while I was inspecting. I know it?s not drones but to nice not to share.
Oh Man, that queen is a keeper. She laid wood to wood. I see that rarely.
Now, if that hive is gentle, looks that way and a good honey producer, you have a genetic grade quality queen. Breed from that high quality queen.
Quote from: Nock on June 01, 2020, 12:08:11 PM
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Gotcha. Makes sense. I took a pic yesterday of a frame while I was inspecting. I know it?s not drones but to nice not to share.
Gorgeous!
Quote from: sawdstmakr on June 01, 2020, 08:21:58 AM
Quote from: William Bagwell on May 30, 2020, 10:02:02 PM
My bees think they are for storing syrup. At least they drew it out so that is a plus.
William,
That means that your bees do not think they are strong enough to build the hive and feed the drones or the flow is slowing down and there is not enough food coming in to support the drones. Probably the first one.
Jim Altmiller
Oh, they raised plenty of drones just not on the frame where I
wanted drones. First year so trying lots of different things. Wax foundation (5.1 MM), foundation less with Popsicle sticks (some with bamboo skewers) and various plastic foundation. Black, white and green. Have had successes and failures with all in getting them drawn. The little buggers have not only put a patch of drone cells on a bunch of worker frames, they reworked a tiny patch of the drone frame down to worker bee size.
All in all I think they are doing great. Went from a five frame nuc to two hives and a nuc in two months. Oh, most of the green frame might actully be honey rather than sugar syrup. Quit feeding it at the two week mark when I saw how much they had capped. And the green frame was less than 10% capped that day. Wish I had taken a similar set of pictures at four weeks.
Quote from: van from Arkansas on June 01, 2020, 05:34:40 PM
Oh Man, that queen is a keeper. She laid wood to wood. I see that rarely.
Now, if that hive is gentle, looks that way and a good honey producer, you have a genetic grade quality queen. Breed from that high quality queen.
So far they have been gentle as well. I plan on keeping her in mind.
>. Oh Man, that queen is a keeper. She laid wood to wood.
She's a good one Nock. Especially being she's gentle.
It's always a pleasure seeing a full frame of brood, you have a good queen there and I'm glad to hear you are using her for a genetic base. Can't say I'm at your level of bee keeping but we can always be inspired to do better when presented with such wonderful ideas.
My genetic control is to destroy drone cells in hives that aren't producers or have gotten aggressive. LOL
One tip for the drone comb. Have an uncapping fork with you in the beeyard. Sacrifice some drones by sliding the fork along the brood caps at a depth that catches the thorax. Twist and lift. You will pull up about 20 pupae. Quickly turn the fork over and examine the abdomens. If you have a varroa mite problem you will see them on what you just pulled up. The gouges in this breeder drone frame is me doing that. No mites or one mite on 3 fork samples, carryon. Any more than 1 mite, reconsider which hive you are going to put the frame in to emerge. I setup a separate compressed hive at the far edge of the mating yard called "The Barracks". All the capped drone combs go into that hive. In this way, the concentration of varroa from drone combs is in the one hive. Alcohol wash once a week followed by a shot of OAV if warranted. The barracks is also restocked with frequent shakes of nurse bees and lots of open nectar combs to caretake the emerged drones. When the drones mature and get flying, they naturally disperse amongst all the other hives and nucs in the area.
... Hope that helps!
As for nice brood patches here are a couple of pinups. There are better frames deeper in, these are typical in my hives at this time. In the one picture: the frame on the right is packed with pollen, the frame on the left is centre capped and laid right to the bars, the frame still in the box below is capped to the bars except for the centre where her first spring brood patch had just recently emerged and already been relaid. That is only 3 frames into the box. I figure that one is a keeper. ;) The last picture is just another example of what I am looking for as I go through deciding who gets to keep her head on and who gets sent off by the hive tool guillotine.
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Very nice pics HP.
My wife is a nurse and once showed my a pic of the back of someones hand with big, easy to IV veins showing. The caption read "Nurse crack". I was thinking the same thing when I saw the pic of sealed brood from top cells to bottom, only for beeks.
Really makes your day when you see you have a girl that just can't miss a cell.
You will like this then. Taken today. All day long one after another. Cracked out all day, LoL. I actually was thinking of pinching this one. Look how many she missed. What a slouch.
it!(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20200606/d2afbd154a167eabe150cdd6c55ed806.jpg)
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Wow HP - gorgeous!!
HP, beautiful queen cells. Those open cells on the frame of capped brood;
1. Did the queen just miss a cell here and there?
2. Are those mite infected cells or virus infected that the nurse bees removed?
#2 would be a hygenic, beautiful queen. A keeper for sure. But I have not figured out how to determine the difference. Any ideas?
HP - you are killing me! :grin: ... very beautiful! ... Definitely shouldn't keep that Queen. Pls feel free to send her to me. :cheesy: