>From: "Mark D. Egloff" <[log in to unmask]>
>Date:         Wed, 28 Aug 1996 16:14:39 EST
>Subject:      Drone Foundation Source of Supply?
 
>     I have been looking for a source for Drone sized foundation.
>     Does anyone know who handles it, it price, and such?
 
>     Mark Egloff
>     Dayton, Ohio.
 
Hi Mark,
 
Check with Dadant's & Son's, they have made it for me in the past on
special order for large orders and may still have the die's around
or even some stock.
 
I have used 10's of thousand's sheets of drone foundation in 6 5/8
supers in all flavors of foundation, such as wired, plastic core,
colored, and you name it. It works great, but if you do not have
excluders you could end up rearing a lot more drones in the spring and
today this would translate to a lot more Varroa Mites as they are said
to prefer drone brood over worker.
 
I can not tell you if this is so or not, but am sure that the varroa
mites DO prefer the drones that are reared between the supers in double
hives without excluders and suspect it is because it is warmer. That is
I have never seen full frames of drone brood away from the center of the
brood that was highly infested with mites. But that is not to say it
does not happen or won't.
 
On the up side of drone foundation it would amaze any beekeepers how
fast and how many frames of it they will draw out wall to wall early in
the spring with little flow, at least 3 or 4x more then worker
foundation. It also extracts better in super fast extractors with out
foundation's braking down.
 
I do not think or could I ever detect any larger total numbers of drones
in a season being reared or present with all the drone comb I could pile
on my hives, but they will grow larger numbers of drones early on in the
season, and this is advantages to anyone who rears queens. Also makes
some real interesting looking swarms of bees that have more drones then
workers that look as big as a man but will in a day or so fit in one or
two boxes as the drones move on.  The total number of drones reared in a
season seems fixed as it may be with the worker bees themselves. But I
should warn all this OLd Drone has no prejudices when it comes to the
drones, or their numbers, the more the better!
 
I know you can extend the time it takes for a queen to lay out her
normal number of eggs of any caste with a queen excluder but in the end
there are limits regulated by genetics, and your local bee environment.
Colonies with excluders grow just as big as ones without it just takes
longer.
 
This is not to say you can not 'high ball' queens to do more with more
apiary movement, and/or diet supplements but in the end you only reduce
the life span of the queen and have to replace her which is the secret
of most successful migratory beekeepers today who use gasoline to gain
more brood and more bee's and honey by extending the bee season by
moving there bees from early southern or western pastures to later
northern or eastern pastures. A estimated 1,200 semi loads of bee's
move into and out of California each season, and maybe 2,000 or more
for the total US. In the future, maybe in the next century when NAFTA is
100% working the range of movement may reach far south into Mexico and
north into Canada.
 
I have found no difference in any of the commercial strains of bee's
available today in the US in this respect. They all are only good for so
many frames of brood per season, but in the past I have had some darker
strains of queens that were long living and productive as the best in
any honey flow but would brake us today in our needs to make divides
with brood or bees as they just never did grow a surplus of brood or
bees but had brood when other stock did not and queens they would
outlast most high school bee helpers, four years and more. One stock
that I used until the old Georgia bee breeder died was of the gray
Caucasian variety and also were so gentle that I could and did take
unaware visitors, some beekeepers, some not, out into the bee yard at
anytime of year, good or bad weather and without smoke of any kind pull
the hives apart and demonstrate how gentle the bees were by tossing the
bees off a frame into the air. May have had a few racing pulses but
never had anyone stung including myself. These bees were also slow to
stop rearing bees and would have done well in eight frame hives but were
productive as any I ever had. I used to keep them together in one truck
load yard just to enjoy a day of working bees without fear of the normal
ration of stings.
 
                       ttul OLd Drone
 
 
 
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