On 26-Jul-12, at 11:16 AM, Juanse Barros wrote: > I use 1 drone producing hive per 50 queens > which security factor would you like to define for your operation? > 2x? 5x? > 10x? Hi Juanse Mike and all I am not a queen producer and have never raised queens of my own in almost 40 years of beekeeping(shame on me but my wife thinks I spend too much time with my bees). Using Jaunse's example he would use one drone hive per 50 mating nucs. Would one hive have 500 - 1000 mature drones needed to mate with 50 queens at any given time? Queen producers, especially in the north with our short season, raise thousands of queens at a time. Where do the 10-20 drones per mated queen come from? Bob Darrell Caledon Ontario (finally getting some substantial rain this week) Canada 44N80W *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm