Hold on to your seats before reading . this thread

[Lburou]

Great info Efmesh, thanks   

That shotgun brood pattern can be caused by matings with drones too closely related to the queen as described by Ef, and also occurs as one of the symptoms of Parasitic Mite Syndrome (PMS) via Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH). 

In bees expressing VSH, about 19-35% of capped larva containing varroa mites are cleaned out (killing mites and sometimes larva), leaving random open cells and a spotty brood pattern.  So nowadays, the trick is to divine whether your shotgun pattern is from inbred matings, or PMS.  With a shotgun or spotty brood pattern, some sort of mite count is in order.  And then usually a mite treatment because poor matings are fairly uncommon.  Keeping one to three hives between 1976 and 1992, I never did see a spotty brood pattern.  It is not uncommon nowadays because of the prevalence of mites and the honey bee's effort to keep the mite population down using VSH.

I can see why your training focused on the haploid eggs and larvae because it is absolutely essential that you have a group of donor drones unrelated to the IIQ.

I'd be interested to hear from Chip, Iddee, Perry or other bee inspector the differential diagnosis between EFB and PMS.  Don't mean to hijack your thread EF, please forgive me. 

[LazyBkpr]

Interesting read right there...
   I used to raise Springer Spaniels and read a LOT about breeding...  LINE breeding, bother to sister etc is how may breeders would "set" specific traits that they desired, however, the problem with that was that it also "set" the undesirable traits in that line... So I always tried to stay away from the dogs whos papers showed line breeding in their backgrounds and was very successful at raising some Beautiful dogs that were avid hunters...
   I got into a LOT of trouble for that... HUNTING Springers are supposed to be WHITE with a few spots, ratty looking ears etc...
   While SHOW spaniels wee supposed to be blanket back dogs of brown and white or black and white and be about as stupid as the universe is large...
   I ended up with Blanket back beautiful dogs, and won the local competition with my stud dog... and was asked never to come back because I was ruining the breed.....


   Anyhow....     What EF has basically said, is that Line breeding is not possible in honey bees because the allales prevent the eggs from beign viable??

[tecumseh]

a Lee comment...
While looking at some bees with our tecumseh, he reached down with a light touch and pinned a drone to the honeycomb.  He explained that a sexually mature drone would 'buzz' when touched in this manner, and an immature drone would not.  That is a way to confirm drones are of sufficient age to mate (or, in this case, donate sperm).  This test in early spring will give you the greenlight to begin grafting or II.

You wouldn't want drones from the same hive or a closely related hive to mate with your open mated queens, but if your drones are mature, drones in your area probably are too.  If your drones 'buzz' when lightly pinned to honeycomb, there will be drones to mate with your queens in your area if you are not fortunate enough to Instrumentally Inseminate your queens.  I hope this is useful and not too far off topic. 

my comments...
not off topic at all.  this method of testing for the relative age of the drones (as explained by Lee above) was in fact shown to me by Sue.  about the most simple way to capture drones approaching maturity is to lean a queen excluder up in front of a hives entrance in the early morning hours.  then come back in the early afternoon and capture the drones on the front side of the excluder < most of these 'flying drones' have in fact releaved themselves so you don't have to have the mess of their poop included when you extract their semen. 

Sue is an extremely nice person and I (and wife) have a standing invitation to meet up with her and her husband and work a few of their hives in Washington State.  I hope to do this next year.  If I ever have time to rear more queens (ie to sell) I hope to use one of the two distinct lines of queens that Sue is now producing.  These are not cheap so I need to have an income stream fixed in my calculation to justify that expense.   

[efmesch]

To bring you up to date on my grandson''s activities:  He's been honing up on  his queen raising skills.  Though he hasn't yet done any instrumental insemination, he's been replacing the queens of his 200+ hives using queen cells he's grafted from his best producing hives of this past year.  At the same time, he is starting to line up top producing queens scheduled for replacement, donated from the the hives of other local beekeepers.  These will be kept for raising non-related males for instrumental insemination. 
Tec's comment about using drones back from flights  can't be emphasized too strongly.  Having their bowels emptied before returning makes the sperm collection process considerably easier.  The only problem is that, when collected on the outside, you can't be 100% crtain that they originated form that hive and with a planned breeding opration, you really want to know who the "daddy" is and where he comes from.
In the meantime though, he's saved himself a big bundle this year by not having to buy his queen cells for requeening.

[Knucs]

EF, what's his strategy to get plenty of drones to be produced?

[efmesch]

Right now isn't the time of year when he would be able to produce drones in any quantity, but in planning toward the spring (thinking optimistically, that isn't too far off    ) he's bought drone foundation and he plans on providing the selected queens with drone cells for laying their eggs.

[Knucs]

EF, if he is using 10 frame Lang's, would he put 1 or 2 drone frames in per hive that he wants drones from? Also, where would they best be placed, in the middle of the brood, or edges? Also, during a flow??

Thanks,
Kelly

[efmesch]

Great questions Kelly!  I don't really know the answers and will ask him when we get together later this week.
 
To put things into a time frame let me add the following info.
Spring buildup in Israel starts early in Feb, about 8 weeks before the spring flow begins.  Swarming season starts here around April 1st (although, in the past few years I've seen swarms even one or two weeks earlier (Effect of global warming?).  As I figure it with 25 days for development of drones and three weeks for them to reach full maturity, the drone foundation would have to be placed in the hives about six weeks before swarms are expected to appear and even earlier if he would want to have his drones ready for Instrumental insemination to have queens ready for introduction n new swarms/nucs.  Personally, I don't think more than one drone frame would be advisable per hive, but that would really depend on their strength early in Feb.  As to positioning,  without any other advice to go by, I would tend to put them at the edge of the brood nest--a location where they are usually raised spontaneously.
But all that I have said is open to advice/comments from the more experienced.

[efmesch]

I forgot to mention, Yes, his hives are all full sized 10 frame langs.  But, than again, he may intend to raise the drones in nucs.  Another question to ask him......

[Lburou]

FWIW Kelly & Ef, I had an interesting experience involving and drone brood two years ago.  I had left a drawn deep drone foundation in a two deep hive over winter.  In fall it was full of honey, and when I looked in March, it was completely filled with capped drone brood. 

The location of the drone brood was striking because the active brood nest was still in the lower hive body. This frame was on the outside in the second hive body.  If this experience has any lesson to teach, it may be that the empty drone cells can be used away from the brood nest in mild weather and a colony strong enough to keep two brooding sites warm.

[Knucs]

Thanks EF & Lburou,

I'm asking cause I plan on rearing queens next year & want to saturate my area with drones, making what Larry Connor calls 'drone mother hives'. So much to learn.