no drones in hive

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ianf

New Bee
Joined
Sep 20, 2009
Messages
38
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Location
Isle of Islay
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
5
Good Morning all. I have a very basic question, and i know there are some very clever people out there, which i am sure can give me an answer. I have a hive of bees which i inspected a couple of days ago. Doing very well with a lot of bees. But not one drone, would they swarm without any drones in the hive. I believe not, but am not sure. There are no Q-cells. I have not seen the Queen in the last two inspections, but she must be there because there are eggs and larva. Ian. Isle of Islay.
 
drones

what would come first the drones or the queen cells.
 
It may depend on what you consider as a lot of bees. It can be very subjective and also dependent on when inspected!

Generally they will not rear drones until more than a minimum number. I have seen 6 thousand quoted somewhere but doubtless that might depend on size of home etc. Remember the numbers can rise very rapidly once the winter bees expire, as she may, by then, be laying at a good rate and with bees soon to emerge at 16 hundred to 2 thousand each day, maybe.
 
Hi iandf,
In previous years my colonies have been late in producing drones, but this year they are early. Can't say that, in my case, I can see a correlation between large numbers of bees in the hive and drone brood production quite the opposite. I have got new supercedure queens and an old queen and they are all producing drone brood. Perhaps it is to do with there being a good flow on. I am with Cazza on this one, so enjoy the peace whilst it lasts.
 
I had a look through my 6 hives this week and while there was some drone brood I only saw one drone.
 
Just because there's no drones, doesn't mean they won't swarm - queens will mate with drones in a drone congregation area not in a hive.
Saying that - just because there are drones in a hive, doesn't mean they are going to swarm. a well populated balanced hive strives to achieve a 20% drone population regardless of their urge to swarm - they're needed to mate with queens from other colonies
 
Sex is rearing its ugly head

I would agree with the general trend of the comments.

A hive that is starting to think of the joys of swarming seems to start off with drone production and then move onto queens.

Since drones take 14 days to mature once they have emerged (IIRC) it makes sense for the hive to make sure there are plenty of "their" drones about before the local virgins start their mating flights.

I always make a note of drone emergence as I consider it a two week warning before queen cells start to appear in that colony.

And any warning about queen cells is worth having :)
 
A classic case of a of an event (drone production) that corellates with another event , but is neither neccessary nor sufficient condition for that event (swarming)
 
A classic case of a of an event (drone production) that corellates with another event , but is neither neccessary nor sufficient condition for that event (swarming)

Thats beekeeping
 
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