Drone brood before swarming.

[Bob Wilson]

I have a palm sized patch of capped drone comb on a single frame, but none in any of my other hives. I have seen no drones yet either.
I am assuming a hive won't even think about making queen cells until drones are flying. Correct?

[Brian MCquilkin]

I have a palm sized patch of capped drone comb on a single frame, but none in any of my other hives. I have seen no drones yet either.
I am assuming a hive won't even think about making queen cells until drones are flying. Correct?

I will start grafting and making queen cells when I see drones walking on the comb

[jtcmedic]

I have a palm sized patch of capped drone comb on a single frame, but none in any of my other hives. I have seen no drones yet either.
I am assuming a hive won't even think about making queen cells until drones are flying. Correct?

I will start grafting and making queen cells when I see drones walking on the comb

I second this

[TheHoneyPump]

I have a palm sized patch of capped drone comb on a single frame, but none in any of my other hives. I have seen no drones yet either.
I am assuming a hive won't even think about making queen cells until drones are flying. Correct?

I will start grafting and making queen cells when I see drones walking on the comb

I second this

Make that 3x. I do not start grafting until there are walking drones on the combs.  I have`t taken specifics notes on such, but I observation and inclination would likely show that the bees are of the same mind as us about when to start queen cells (walking drones).  Unless of course they are already queen less or desperate with a failing queen, then they will draw cells pdq - asap - rfn - ..

So yes Bob, you do not need to get concerned (yet) - wait until about 1 week after you see that patch of drones emerge and walking around in the colony.  That hive with the patch of drones; most likely that is also your oldest queen?

Hope that helps!

[Bob Wilson]

No. She is just came through her first winter. She has brood on 8 frames already.
Thanks for the advice. I was planning on waiting 2 more weeks before making nucs.

[BurleyBee]

Thanks for posting this.  My hives are stacked right now with bees and I?ve been worrying about swarming/grafting.  It?s a cloudy day but I had to check.  Just came inside from checking a hive and I can?t find drone brood at all.   Some in my area have seen some.  I?ll try to stop worrying and go back to assembling boxes?.

[JurassicApiary]

Great thread and knowledge shared (and gained).  Thanks for the post!

[Oldbeavo]

Hi Bob
If you open some of the drone brood and the larvae have purple eyes, near to hatching, you could consider splitting off some brood to make a nuc to reduce the chance of swarming.
The drones need to be 42 days old to be fertile to mate new queens.

[Bob Wilson]

Thanks Beavo. I didn't know that about the purple eyes.

[beesnweeds]

I always wait until lots of pollen and nectar are coming in as well as drones starting to fly to begin grafting.  Maybe I have bad bees, but I usually have one or two colonies ready to swarm well before drones are capped.  If for some reason they get ahead of me and swarm, the queen always successfully mates.  They most know something I dont.

[Oldbeavo]

Reply #7 is aimed at not having hives swarm, i suppose this is a commercial point of view but swarming will cost you at least 6 weeks of lower honey production.
Also there goes your good queen and you hope your new queen mates with good drones. We have had it happen twice when a group of hives swarmed and the drones the new queens mated to were nasty. We ended up replacing about 30 of 50 queens in the group for temperament.
There are years when you can't keep them in the box and it creates a lot of work, less honey and overall costs you $$$.

[Bob Wilson]

Yes. I commiserate.
Last year all three of my hives swarmed the week the honey flow started.
I only pulled two gallons of honey the whole year from three hives.
I hope I have the experience this year to circumvent that happening again.
A week and a half from now, I am pulling nucs, redistributing resources, and priming the pump for honey flow in April/May.
Between pulling the nucs and opening the broodnest with empty frames, I hope to keep them too busy to swarm.