Subject: Drone Traps

From: [email-masked] (Andy Nachbaur)
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 02:51:00 GMT

JC>From: Jon Camp <[email-masked]>
  >Subject: Re: Lookin' for Bee Equipment

JC>>   Does anyone know why this method and piece of equipment fell out of
  >>favor?

JC>Yes, because a virgin queen and accompanying swarm of workers
  >will slip through it like butter, and the "queen" trap is just
  >as effective at catching and filling up with drones, as it is
  >with queens.  I have one sitting on a shelf (next to a solid

Hello Bee Workers,

Those old queen traps, or more appropriately called "drone traps" now
are still useful in that they can be used if for nothing else in the
late spring when drones are numerous to catch handfuls to examine for
vampire mites. The normal host for vampire or varroa mite are the drones
and in most bee hives the initial infestation will come with drones
drifting in from infested hives which may be miles away. The drones
themselves are marvelous creatures to study and all is not yet know
of there habits.

One fun thing that any beekeeper can do is to give the queen free access
to drone foundation in the spring. You will be amazed at how fast the
bee's will draw it out on very little honey flow and how little of it
will be used by the queen, but of course you will get more drones early
and nice a few nice full frames if you use 3/4 depth or shallow frames.
But I suspect that the total number per season will not be that much
more then if your bee's did not have drone foundation.

Another fun thing that will amaze you and your friends is to seal the
hive up for a month in the spring so that the drones can not get out,
quite common if you have ever collected pollen. Then on a nice warm
afternoon when you know virgins are flying, open the hive by removing
the top, but stand back...Nature will take it's course and like fuzzy
faced youths they are will leave the hive by the thousands in mass, with
a roar that will cause you and your friends to take cover, and
they will disappear in a cloud never to bee seen again, at least in that
hive. I can tell you for sure few come back because I have waited to see
them more then once, and it is easy to understand if you have ever
watched them take off with out any great effort like a worker bee or
even a virgin queen that can be watched as they fly in almost circles
which could be assumed to be collecting visual signals so they can find
their way back to the right hive. You can also get a can of spray poster
paint, the non-toxic type and spray a ga'zillion drones from one good
drone producing hive a light color like white, or blue, or even yellow
that will make them easy to see among the worker bees. I time this to
catch the young drones before they are mature enough to leave the drone
mother hive. Hint; when the drone brood is sealed put it in a super
above an excluder so you can find them to spray mark them without doing
all the worker bee's at the same time. don't forget to remove the
excluder so they can get out and fly. You can also use other things,
like fine flour or chalk to mark them depending on how long you want the
marks to last. The spray paint does not seem to harm them and last's a
long time. Anyway the whole idea was to see how far the drones from one
hive would drift and into how many hives, swarms, and so on.. You will
be amazed and your neighbor beekeepers will be amazed, do this a few
time's and someday some old timer will be telling stories like this
about the time he caught this huge swarm of bee's and all the drones
were different colors, not just yellow, and blacks, but reds, whites and
blues..
                    ttul, the OLd Drone

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