To continue the drone theme on the queen rearing, I have dome some calculations on when a drone would have to be laid to be able to mate with a queen today, 28 March.
 
The queen would have to be about 7 days old to mate.  The drone would need to be about 14 days old to be sexully mature.  As one retired queen breeder in Australia told me you cannot send a boy out to do a mans job.  As it takes 24 days for a drone to hatch from an egg, it would have to have been 38 days ago that the drone was laid i.e. 14 plus 24.
 
So 38 days back from 28 March is about 18 February.  So those talking of mating queens now need to have drones laid around 18 February.  Was that possible?
 
This a common fault of beekeepers who expect queen breeders to have queen bees available like going to a supermarket and taking some off the shelf.  It takes a lot of planning to get drones the right age to mate with queens.  For beekeepers the first good weather comes and they start thinking of queens and want them straight away.  They forget that the queen breeder has to have started at least 40 days before in getting drones ready.  In reality it is more like 50 days.  That is nearly two months. Think back two months and what were you doing then.
 
Trevor Weatherhead
AUSTRALIA