3 to 1 ratio drone over worker

[riverbee]

i would (what woody said) and i wouldn't wait too long.  also, sometimes queens won't move up even when there is a small band of honey at the tops of the frames in the brood nest, so by doing what woody said, and moving some up and replacing with empties should encourage her/the bees to move up.

[tbonekel]

Update on this hive. I wanted to show a couple of pics of what they are doing in the drone department.





This is both sides of the same frame. This was a foundationless frame I put in a couple of weeks ago. It is solid drone. But, I'm not too worried yet. They are pretty limited to this frame only. The rest seem pretty normal. It just looks like a lot of drone to me.

[LazyBkpr]

I use mediums /  foundation-less and typically have two full frames of Drone comb out of about 30 frames. They do put an additional odd cluster here and there depending on the season. Often those odd locations, and eventually the full frames of drone comb end up filled with honey by late fall.

[Woody Roberts]

Like lazy I usually have two solid drone frames per hive with scattered patches elsewhere. Mine only lay up solid drone in the early spring. After that there's always some drone brood but not that much.

Remember just because drones were born there doesn't mean they'll stay there.

I'm pretty hard headed and set in my ways but I'm convinced a hive with a healthy population of drones run smoother.

It could be that only a strong, healthy colony will build a lot of drones. For me if the bees want them then I want them to have them.

This certainly doesn't go along with popular opinion though. An area I'm somewhat familiar with.

[minz]

Good thread, I just got on tonight to see if I could find out why one of my hives, packed wall to wall seemed to be just massive drones. They filled in between the boxes with nothing but drone cells.
I am going to throw some foundation at them between the deeps in the AM.

[tbonekel]

I also have one other hive that I put one foundationless frame in last week. In 6 days, they drew it out fully and there are young larva and eggs. Entire comb is drone size.

[Jen]

I'm not a expert at this drone syndrome thing, but could it be the queen has run out of sperm?

[tbonekel]

I had thought of that Jen, but not in this case. The drone brood is capped and I saw eggs in worker sized comb on other frames. Plus the worker brood pattern on the other frames really looks good. I have just about decided that they have this thing under control and know what they need. I'm just going to get out of the way and let it happen.

[Jen]

Okee Dokee 

[minz]

Cold and rainy this am so did not go finish up.  Maybe fishing in the AM and take another shot. It is supposed to hit 70 this week but work is in the final stretch of a big project. I hope the bugs can wait a week.