>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 (c) Permission is granted to freely copy this document in any form, or to print for any use. (w)Opinions are not necessarily facts. Use at own risk. --- ~ QMPro 1.53 ~ Beekeepers Dream..... 80,000+ Females in one box....!.