At 11:54 AM 2/20/97 -0500, Larry Conner wrote: >For those of you who have drone-filled colonies in February, check the >queen's spermatheca. If you don't know how to do this, find someone who does. >Perhaps Dave Knox at Beltsville Bee Lab will check a few. >I last saw large scale drone production in winter during the winter after our >last bad eastern U.S. winter (77-78). Tens of thousands of queens were >producing drones. Upon checking, queens had a shortage of sperm in the >spermathecae. >Several people trace the matter back to the conditions under which the queens >were mated in the South during the cold winter. There were drones in colonies >at the time of mating, but either they were not producing much sperm, a >reflection of pollen shortage, or their flight was restricted. Since many >queen producers remembered poor pollen supplies during mating, we concluded >that there was a shortage of sperm in the otherwise healthy drones. Sperm are >produced during the larval stage, and pollen is necessary then. Pollen is >also needed for proper maturation of the drone as an adult. Thus, there is a >two week period in which any major pollen shortage -- even a few days -- can >result in substandard drones. >Since there is some sperm in the drones, they queens mate and produce good >colonies during the summer. They then run out of sperm (the spermatheca >becomes more transparent rather than dense cream in color) and start >producing a large number of drones. >This may or may not be the issue. Let's hear some hive inspection reports on >the ratio of worker:drone brood, quantities of each, presence of drone brood >in worker cells, and spermatheca checks. >Oh yes, removing the spermatheca does kill the queen. Larry: I think you are right on. My colony with the drones has about 25% worker brood in worker cells and the rest are all drones--in worker cells. So many of the drones are small sized. I will check her spermathecae when the season gets along a little more and I can reliably replace her. Thanks for the input Jim Amrine