>  Makes me think maybe a way to estimate the drone population in a yard
would bee to set a queen excluder at the entrance of a strong hive in the
early afternoon and then see how the drone numbers built up both behind the
excluder in the hive and in front of the excluder for drones trying to get
back into the hive.

Just an observation of mine without any data to support it, but I guess
drones are able to smell the queen cells or the virgin queens so they
gather inside mating nucs, therefore I imagine the above experiment with
queen excluder but using mating nucs.

My observation is that in spite of doing the mating nucs without any drones
or drone cell a day or so after placing the queen cell drones start to
gather inside the mating nucs.

my 2c

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