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  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Hive Full of Drones
  • Date: Mon, 2 May 2016 10:18:39 -0400

Mike,

One plausible scenario is that all of that perpendicular comb in the bottom boxes is drone comb. Given their druthers, bees want about 10 percent of their brood to be drones, so if they are given the chance to free-form the comb they'll make up for all the worker-sized cells by building drone cells. That could explain the big population of drones.

On top of that, swarm season is also drone-producing season. A colony with sex on its mind will not only produce queen cells but also lots of drones.

So, what you may be seeing is just a very productive, very sex-minded colony, not one that is queenless with laying workers. If they swarm then chances are that the new queen will come into play just fine, no problem.

But if I were you, I would go into those bottom supers and clean them up. If they are nothing but drone comb then you aren't out anything. And if they are in the process of swarming and making a new queen, those cells won't have much if any worker brood right now either. Just make sure you don't accidentally destroy a queen cell that has the next regent designate.

Just my 2 cents, from an arm-chair quarterback perspective. An in-hive inspection may tell a completely different story.

Randall Austin


On 4/29/2016 4:13 PM, Michael Malecek wrote:
Last spring I moved a neglected hive from a beekeeper's property to a community garden. This beekeeper kept bees for a year or two, the hive died, and it was left outside through the winter and spring. In the spring of last year a swarm moved in and decided to build comb perpendicular to the frames. This means the bottom two medium supers are difficult to inspect since I can't remove the frames without destroying the comb. After moving this hive to the community garden it did well all of last year and survived through the winter. In terms of bee population, it is probably my strongest hive, currently.

I went in the hive yesterday and encountered something I haven't seen in my 7 years of beekeeping. This is an 8-frame hive with four medium supers (the bottom two with the perpendicular comb, the top two supers with normal frames). As I inspected the supers and went deeper into the hive I saw more and more drones. It looked like a lot at the top super, but they seemed to be pouring out of the frames of the bottom two supers when I smoked them. In the bottom supers it looked like drones made up almost half the population. Granted it was midday and many of the workers were out.

I looked at the bottoms of the frames in the bottom two supers and did notice 3-5 queen cells. A few looked like an unfinished version of the "peanut", but the rest either looked like something emerged or that it was aborted. The openings had that chewed up wax appearance. It was too difficult for me to look for supercedure cells since I couldn't remove the frames. I couldn't see brood or eggs in the hive, but also couldn't inspect the bottom two supers very well because of the perpendicular comb.

My question is what to do next and how did the hive get so many drones? Since I saw open queen cells, do I let the situation play out and see if a new queen starts laying in the next couple of weeks. Or is my hive without a queen, meaning I should re-queen it quickly? Or is it too late, I have too many laying workers that won't accept a new queen? The hive has a lot of activity at the entrance, has been storing a lot of nectar/honey, and seems to be strong, so I'd like to keep them going.

- Mike M.


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