A Drone Question

Ben Framed · December 29, 2018, 08:32:49 PM

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"

robirot · December 29, 2018, 08:37:16 PM

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

beepro · December 29, 2018, 08:40:10 PM

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.

van from Arkansas · December 29, 2018, 09:05:39 PM

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.

Ben Framed · December 29, 2018, 09:19:29 PM

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"

iddee · 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.

Ben Framed · December 29, 2018, 10:29:10 PM

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

TheHoneyPump · December 30, 2018, 01:17:23 AM

+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.

Ben Framed · December 30, 2018, 01:28:28 AM

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

Ben Framed · December 30, 2018, 02:36:07 AM

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

cao · 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.

Ben Framed · December 30, 2018, 03:04:50 AM

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

TheHoneyPump · December 30, 2018, 03:48:57 AM

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!

Ben Framed · December 30, 2018, 08:21:40 AM

@ 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

Ben Framed · December 30, 2018, 08:46:21 AM

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

BeeMaster2 · December 30, 2018, 09:14:55 AM

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

Ben Framed · December 30, 2018, 09:17:34 AM

Very interesting Jim! Thanks for your input.
Phillip Hall

van from Arkansas · December 30, 2018, 03:45:21 PM

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.

iddee · 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.

Ben Framed · December 30, 2018, 04:16:37 PM

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?