Hi All

Jim gives a synopsis of much that I have heard of the way that US beeks 
treat drone brood.

It seems to me that drones are treated as 'unnecessary' or at least a 
nuisance.

> The problem was that cutting out drone cells assured
> that the bees would both replace the cut-out comb area 
> with drone comb again, and also convert worker cells 
> to drone cells as a short-term reaction to the sudden 
> lack of drone brood.  

Jim describes accurately what happens in hives where an inadequate 
number of drone cells are available.

> The bees really want that drone brood.

Yes, and they will only be content with between 16% and 27% drone cells 
available.

> So, the long term impact of cutting out drone brood is
> going to be a colony with more and more drone cells,
> prompting more cutting, drifting in a slow spiral 
> towards having a significant fraction of drone comb.

But once that significant fraction is actually reached they should be 
satisfied and not over-produce drone cells. Although the resulting 
frames may look scruffy to those that dis-encourage drones.

> feeding drone brood through the capping 
> stage is "expensive" in both resources and labor.

I have no argument here, the resources are required and can be measured 
(the amount of pollen required is staggering), but if the colony as a 
whole is examined, there is less of a shortfall than the drone brood 
raised would indicate, there is a degree of compensation in work rate as 
the bees seem to raise drones more willingly.

Apart from number of drone cells per hive, the placement of patches of 
drone cells and size of patch seem to be important to the bees, although 
bees can be forced to produce whole frames of comb containing mainly 
drone cells, they never do so naturally, there is a logic to the patchy 
nature of drone comb, such that an expanding brood nest comes to 
encompass and use the patches as and when they have expanded to the 
right degree to need them. This can be used by breeders to good effect 
to artificially increase drone numbers.

-- 
Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://melliferabees.net Email: [log in to unmask]
Short FallBack M/c, Build 7.21/2.01
Son of ORAC M/c, Build 5.o1/2.o1

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