On Thu, 1 Aug 1996, Tom Allen wrote: > Is there any way to increase the count of drone cells. In my best hive I see > only a couple of dozen drone cells. I do not know what the root of the problem is, but a couple of us at the University have been caging the queens over empty drone cells for about a day using queen excluding mesh, in order to raise our drone production. It usually works pretty good. We have found that it is important that a colony have enough pollen and nectar to accept the drone larvae once they hatch (and we typically supplement with pollen patties and syrup). For a while we had a queen that would lay nothing but drone brood, and she was a good source of drone brood. We kept that colony going for a very long time by continously supplying it with uncapped worker brood. It proved to be a lot of work tho, and we eventually requeened that colony. Alida Janmatt, a scientist in our lab, has more experience with these techniques. > Is this enough ? I don't know. It might be a waste of time to go to all the effort. I think you need at least a couple of dozen drones in the air at a time to ensure mating. Since they aggregate at a mating area, i'm not sure how much over that number needs to be achieved. Cheers, Adony ######################################## *** Adony Melathopoulos **************** ***** Center for Pest Management ******* ******** Simon Fraser University ******* *********** Burnaby, British Coumbia *** ************** CANADA ****************** ######################################## 'If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows' - Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, mid-1800's e-mail : [log in to unmask] tel : (604) 291-4163