Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Drone Brood Trapping
Female varroa mites prefer to infest drone brood just before the bees cap it over because
drones take a bit longer to mature than worker larvae (14½ days versus 12 days). That
tiny bit of time gives the female varroa mite longer to raise one or two more young.
One of the fundamental principles of integrated pest management: Provide an attract-
ive bait in a good trap, let the pest wander in, and catch them in the trap. Drone brood
makes an excellent trap.
A healthy honey bee colony during the active season will allow 10 to 15 percent
of their brood comb space to raise drones. If you are using three medium eight-frame
boxes for brood space that means the queen will produce about three of those frames
full of drone comb—full on both sides.
So make it easy for the queen to find drone comb. Here's how I do it.
This is what you will have if you put a frame with no foundation in your colony. The bees
will fill this handy empty space with the drone comb the colony thinks it needs. You
need three to five of these in your brood boxes to accommodate the 15 percent drone
comb the bees want in the colony.
Keep the frames in rotation so they aren't all full at the same time and the bees always
have something to work with.
If you don't provide a place for the colony to put their drone comb, they'll put it where
ever they want, such as this damaged comb. It is a perfect place for varroa to repro-
duce with no controls in place.
I find the one or two frames in the brood nest that have worker foundation or comb
and no, or very little, worker brood and replace them with frames with no foundation.
(The worker brood I will share with another colony.) The bees will fill this conveni-
ent space in that empty frame with drone comb, the queen will find and lay only drone
eggs in those frames, and female varroa mites will find and infest this convenient drone
brood; thank you very much.
