remember, not all big cells are made to raise drones.  the bees will also make large cells to store honey if there is no room and comb must be built in a hurry (more honey can be stored more quickly with less wax in bigger cells).  if a heavy flow (or feeding) is on, and there are no available cells, they will build the large cells.

our bees contiune (in this season) to draw 4.9mm cell comb as we feed empty frames into the broodnest.

my original comments were regarding adding one foundationless frame into a colony...in our case, where we started packages on 5 frames of HSC, all of our hives have drawn between 15-25 frames without foundation.  most of these frames have 4.9mm cells in the center, and larger honey storage in the top corners, and drone cells in the bottom.  in a hive full or worker foundation, the one empty frame is likely to be all (or mostly) drone.

have you observed 35-40% drone comb?  were these mostly filled with honey or drone brood? doesn't seem like a good survival trait to me.

deknow

-- Eric Brown <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I'm pretty suspicious of the 
15% figure.  Under those kinds of circumstances, I think 30, 35, even 40% drone comb can be realized.

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