Easy Method To Boost Local Drone Population

In this video, I'm going to show you how to boost the natural drone population by adding drone foundation into your brood box. So not everybody has to do this. Don't look at this video and think, I need to go and boost the drone population. But if you're rearing queens this year and you're selecting for queens, you need to do your best to try and boost the natural drone population. And you need to do that by selecting the best of the best and giving them additional drone foundation to draw out, to boost the population. but more importantly, to boost the population from the specific hives that can give you the best traits. It is the most simple manipulation in the world to do though. All we're gonna do, we're gonna take a frame of drone foundation, we're gonna place it into the middle of a brood box, we're gonna let the bees draw that out, the queen will go, she'll lay it up, especially this time of year, doesn't take long at all. And then within a couple of weeks, you'll go back and you'll be able to see a frame full of completely capped drone brood. I would recommend for each colony, Maybe 1 to 2 frames depending on your sizes. If you're on 14 by 12, I would suggest just a single frame is sufficient. If you're on a national or national deep system, maybe go up to 2 frames if you're only doing it on a few colonies. And if you're doing it spread across a number of colonies, you can get away with just adding an additional single frame. What I'm doing this year, bit of a change for me, is that I'm using my red plastic frames, the ones that clip together, and I'm gonna use them for my drone flooding. Means that they're gonna be really easy for me to take them out later on in the year. Very easily identifiable, and it means that I can take them out before I do any treatments on them, which means that it's a lot more flexible in terms of what I use those frames for. Also means if I want to convert them back to a worker foundation, very, very simple. I'm just going to clip that frame back open, get rid of all of the wax, and I can just put a new sheet of worker-based foundation in. So I'll get my bee suit on and I'll show you how to flood your apiary with selected drones. This is the colony that we're going to add our frame of drone brood into. As I said, we're using the red plastic frames so we know where they are. Really easy to change it out between drone and worker base as well. And then I've just got a single sheet of drone foundation. I'm gonna put that in there, I'm gonna get it into the hive, show you how to position it, and within a few weeks we're gonna have boosted the drone population in this apiary. So if you've not seen these before, these are the red plastic frames that I've got. You just pop them open there, really nice and easy, push the foundation in, and then they can go straight into the hive. I really love how simple these frames are. You just clip them open with the hive tool, pop your foundation in, and then you're good to go. Let's open up the hive and I'll show you where to position it. So this is a double brood configuration. I've got a 14x12 underneath it, and then the bees are really working hard on these second brood boxes now. This cluster of bees you can see here, they've drawn out a lot of that wax, and then there's almost certainly going to be brood in the middle of that cluster. I'm aiming to find the absolute epicenter of that cluster upstairs, and I'm going to put my frame right in the middle of it. There we go. I found the middle of that little brood nest. Only a small brood nest up there. I'm going to pop my new frame of drone foundation right in the middle of it. Give it a few weeks. We'll come back and we'll see that the queen has completely laid that up. And then we boosted the drone population in this hive. So there we go. Like I said, it's really nice to have the red frame there. Just so easy when it comes to the end of the year, taking these out, doing something different with them. Okay, you could mark them up on the top, but I really like the ability to switch out and switch the different bases. And once you get to the end of the year, you might not want your drone foundation in there. You can take it out, change it for something else. So fast forward a few weeks and I'll show you just how quickly they're going to have filled out all of that drone brood. It's kind of ridiculous. It's not even May yet and the colonies are almost taller than me. Let's get back inside this one though, check the red plastic frame where we added drone foundation, see what the bees have made of it, and see if we've boosted the local drone population by adding drone foundation. This is just outrageous. The bees are already up in the second super above a double brood configuration on a 14 by 12 and a national deep. Okay, they're not doing a huge amount up here, but they're cleaning and repairing the frames. Just crazy. And then the box below, even more so. They're really repairing it. Getting ready for some good spring flows. So here's the brood nest. Really easy to see, isn't it? That red frame sticking out. That's why I love doing it with the drone brood in the red frames. Makes it so easy to pick it, to go and find it, to manage it throughout the season. Let's get in there, see what the bees have made of it. So there we go. Not only have the bees completely drawn it out, the queen's been up there and she has laid that up with drone brood. Every single cell all the way down. Lots and lots of drone brood. It's as easy as that. I won't labour the point. If you've got a good colony, you want to flood it with good drones. Get yourself some drone foundation, mark up the frames that you want to do it in, stick it in the brood box early in the year, and the bees just cannot resist drawing it out, filling it with drone brood, and flooding the air with good quality local drones. Really happy with that. I'm definitely going to stick with these red plastic frames just for my drone brood. Makes the management so much easier, and it means that when you're doing your queen rearing, when you're flooding that local area, you can select the colonies to boost that local drone population to give you a better chance of getting good mating success, but also passing on the genetics that are good. If you want to check out my queen rearing video following Michael Palmer's 10 over 10 method, check out this video here. It gives you all of the steps from cell starters to cell finishers to mated queens.