Plain Talk: About Drone Layers (238)

Episode 238 – Plain Talk: About Drone Layers 

Jim Tew: Listeners, I don't know if 20 minutes will be enough today, and normally I like to just chat with you, but there's a lot of details I'm going to cover here. This is the caper involving an observation hive and apparently a drone layer. Two separate projects that I had planned to combine into one beehive to see if I could control a swarm that won't stay in my observation hive, while at the same time, I would deal with a drone laying colony. The devil's always in the details.

As quickly as I can, in the next 18 or so minutes, I want to tell you where I am, and I wouldn't mind you second-guessing everything I'm talking to you about in the next few minutes, because some of the old bee things just have not worked well. Listeners, I'm Jim Tew. I come to you once a week here at Honey Bee Obscura, where I just enjoy talking about anything and all things plain talk beekeeping. Today, I guess I'll add a mysterious note to my conversation.

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today Podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim Tew: Listeners, for those of you who have not heard all the segments and don't keep up closely or regularly or whatever the right word would be here, several weeks ago I installed two packages and I told you the story in a couple of segments about one of them, after the queen laid apparently just for a couple of days, she vanished. I guess I could say that's mystery number one in this segment. Who knows what happens to those queens? I never see them in the grass. I never see any. They're just gone. She vanished. I took that as just another episode for podcast and discussions.

I'm just keeping bees for enjoyment. I have no other reason for doing this other than enjoyment and mental stimulation. I decided that I would act like a new beekeeper who just had one other colony, also a package. I boldly said I might go buy a queen, but then I decided I didn't want to make the 50-mile round trip to get a queen. I put a frame of brood in to let them raise their own queen, just to be sure they had some queen potential, and then it rained, and then I was on trips for a while to visit my family. The bees were on automatic pilot.

When I finally got back to check them, just probably five days ago, they apparently have a drone layer. Today will be the fourth day that I've gone through these eight frames, maybe seven frames with actual bees on them, studying and looking, and exploring. Listeners, I've not been able to find a queen. Now I was not going straight to laying workers, and this is where some of my old long-term bee information begins to not hold up for me. There's not two eggs per cell or three or five. There's not multiple eggs per cell. There's a nice pattern, nice meaning, three-fourths of the frame is the pattern that's laid out, which is really usually a lot more than what laying workers would do.

Maybe she didn't mate. Maybe during that rain weather, maybe she defectively mated. I don't know. Then comes the question, "Can a virgin queen get through a queen excluder?" I always thought it was the thorax size, and I thought it was the thorax that was too large to get through the queen excluder. Now I guess I don't really know why I thought that. I've not been able to find a queen. I'm going to stay in the section of this problem with the drone layer right now, but keep in mind there's a second game afoot. I came out this morning, and I actually used that old queen and drone trap.

Here I've had that thing around for 50 years, and all of a sudden I've made use of it three or four times. In fact, I'm probably going to write an article about this thing because, so far as I can tell, that window is just about closed, and you can't get one of these things if you wanted it anyway. Why would you want it? I don't know. I put that thing on. Effectively, there was a queen excluder across the front of the hive. Then I shook out all the frames that had bees on it. I go ahead, somebody contact me and tell me, she didn't necessarily have to be on those frames.

She could have been on the wall, or she could have run from me when I began to disturb the colony, so she was someplace else off the brood nest area. That's true. Now I'm defensive. Why didn't I take all the frames out? I took out 90% of them. I didn't move the box. I didn't look absolutely everywhere because I'm having to lean over that hive, and my back hurts so badly after I stand there and look and look and look. Another important point that I'd like to think that's in my favor is that with all these drones, many of them undersized, everywhere you look seems to be a queen possibility.

It's always just an undersized drone. Just the old typical scanning, looking for a queen, looking for the retinue, looking for the regal demeanor, looking for an extended abdomen, in this instance, those things have not worked. I put that queen and drone trap on the front. Then I shook out all the frames that had the majority of the bees on them on a ramp in front of the colony. Then I sat and I watched and I waited for this mysterious queen to finally turn up. That ain't happened. I'm taking a spanking on this. I've never had so much trouble finding a queen, or this is a laying worker pattern like I've never seen before, not ever.

If it were a queen and she was producing viable brood, it would be a beautiful pattern. Have any of you had experience with atypical laying worker appearance, where it's not multiple eggs per cell, and it's not a little patch here and a little patch there? It's six frames with a nice brood pattern. Its problem is most of it are drones. In her defense, in my confusion, there are the occasional new-looking workers, the nice fuzzy, furry, gray bees. It's like every now and then, she hits one if she's in there. I'm waiting as the bees buzz and hum to recover from a cataclysmic upheaval that I gave them, where I shook all the bees out.

I've still got the frames out. I'm going to take a break here and go have a look and see if she, by some chance, is on that trap on the front. That not being the case, I guess I will have to assume that it's beautiful laying workers. That's where I am on that. I wouldn't mind if you wrote me and I got to tell you the truth, I'm just terrible at answering the mail that I get, but I read every bit of it. You think you can see where I've gone wrong or if you have any experiences, let me know, because I want to combine this colony with the swarm that I picked up. I told you about the swarm in a previous segment, and I decided to put it in an observation hive and that went belly up. Why don't we hear from our sponsor before I go into that?

Betterbee: Did you know Betterbee carries both Lyson pollen dryers and pollen cleaners? The Lyson 30-kilogram pollen dryer lets you dry up to 66 pounds of pollen per batch, perfect for serious beekeepers. Once your pollen is dry, use the Lyson pollen cleaner to remove fine debris and leave you with clean golden granules ready for sale or storage. Some items are special order and may require extra lead time, so don't wait. Order early to make sure you get what you need. Visit betterbee.com or call 1-800-632-3379 to order your pollen handling equipment today.

Jim Tew: I've got a nine-frame observation hive, but I'm going to talk to you more about observation hives. I do really enjoy those things, and I've not set one up for the last three years, so this was a year to have one. I did what our audio engineer and co-host partner, Jeff Ott, said not do. I did it, and now I have to say that I think Jeff was far, far, far more right than wrong. She didn't have a brood pattern. When I opened the swarm up and had a look, maybe three days later, I didn't even see eggs, but the colony acted queen right. It was quiet and calm, just with some scenting here and there, so it looked like they had a queen.

As it worked out, let me jump ahead and tell you that part was correct. Indeed, the swarm did have a queen. I put that thing in that nine-frame observation hive. I had six frames that I could use, and I put three frames of foundation up top. I haven't used this thing now in four years, so it was dusty and typically beehive cruddy. I put them all in and it's got a contorted entrance tube that has two 90 degree bends in it and I think it probably really pushes the bees learning ability to the max to suddenly be in a hive that's three on three on three and they're completely confused and you go out the entrance and there's apparently nothing there.

In past instances, it's taken a couple of days for all the bees to individually learn how to get out and then come get back in. It's a long walk with two 90-degree turns. The layout of the room necessitated that. Listeners, remarkably, the bees were coming and going eagerly, readily just five or six hours later, and they'd calmed down, and they had all tightened up on the lower combs that would ideally have had brood on them. Maybe there were some eggs there, I didn't look that closely. I patted myself on the back, and I thought of all the enjoyable times that I was going to have looking at this observation hive and talking to you about it.

Last night I went to dinner. I had crab legs. I treated myself. I had crab legs and fried potatoes, and salad. Sat there and had a nice quiet time for hour and a half. I came back and I wanted to get on with enjoying my observation hive right away. That hive is mostly empty. It was 85% empty. I dashed outside to see if they were clustered someplace or if they were gone, or why did they leave some of the bees there, and I suspect what was happening is that they were still leaving, and I caught them at that moment. Just to be sure you understand where we are and to give you an update, it was my plan to stock this observation hive.

Then, when I realized that the observation hive was [unintelligible 00:13:59] then I decided that I would combine that swarm with this colony that has either a drone laying queen or laying workers. Still got a lot of bees. It's still worth saving. It's going to be a big colony if I can pull this off. Now I got this box of bees outside because where they had gone was back to the original box that I turned up on its end, and they were hanging cluster-like from the upper end of that upturned box. With no protective gear, no nothing, I thought see if she's out here. See if you can find that queen. This is a classic beekeeping needle in a haystack.

I stood there, I took out my pocket knife, case three-bladed Stockman. I opened the 3-inch blade and I used it as a gentle probe to probe the areas where they were clustered. It's hard to describe but with the box in front of me, with the long side toward me, I saw her abdomen flash in the upper right-hand corner which means I really couldn't use my right hand to catch her because I wouldn't be able to bend my wrist backward enough in the middle of all those bees. While I was having that thought, that's about the worst place she could be in that box, she was gone.

I stirred and mixed and stirred and gently mixed and looked and stirred with my old eyes and bees flying everywhere and me thinking the whole time that this is not really a calm swarm anymore. These bees are just a click away from being upset. You've got on no protective gear. I can take the stings, but I really don't like stings around my eyes. As I was having these thoughts, there she was again. Deciding to use my left hand, I made a stab for it and as I was stabbing to get her, I had the thought, the last time you did this, the queen was on the outside of the colony running around, and you made a stab with your right hand and you missed her. How do you think you can do it now with your left hand?

I grabbed a bee, maybe two or three, cupped her in my hand. I'm outside. I went to my shop where I had a queen cage that I knew where it was in the shop. Then knowing that I was taking a huge risk and knowing that I should have gone to a window or something, I just had bump fever, a little adrenaline rush because I had something in my hand. I opened it up and I quickly saw a queen head. They have a little bit different attitude, a little crown, and everything, so they stand out. Boy, she was excited. She was upset. She wanted to go.

I re-cupped her. I pulled the cage out, and that's when I noticed that the cage screen wasn't stapled. Holding her in one hand, I had to get a stapler out and staple the thing closed, and I thought the chances of this working are none. You're supposed to know what you're doing. How can this whole process be so confusing? I got the stapler out, I got the thing opened up, and I stapled the screen back down, and then back to my left hand that had been cupped all this time holding something, there was a queen and one worker. I managed just doing whatever you can do.

At least I was using my right hand, which is my dominant hand, and I was able to capture her or pick her up by her thorax. I didn't hurt her. I got her in the cage. It's a little bit like it was in the previous story in previous segments. Now you got the queen in the cage, what are you going to do? I gave up on the observation hive on this whole thing being an observation hive. It wasn't working, probably because there was no brood. I didn't want to open a colony and pilfer a frame of brood. It was just another colony getting involved in this thing.

I'm just going to drop back and rethink all of it. That was when I had the thought that I would combine this colony with this swarm queen and this colony that has either a laying worker or a drone layer, and that's why I wanted to find this queen. I didn't want to make the bees choose between a swarm queen and a drone laying queen. I wanted to get rid of her if I possibly could, and I've not been able to find her if she's in there. Then this is the mess I had left. I've got this bee box down near my shop that's got bees flying everywhere with the queen confined in it.

I can't just pick it up and move it 75 yards back to my yard without abandoning hundreds of bees down there buzzing all around. I almost feel a need to. I'm behind a fence, but I almost have a need to lower my voice because my neighbor, probably about two out of three conversations, always reminds me that she's highly allergic to bees and has to carry an EpiPen when she's outside. I didn't want to just be right in her face because her house is fairly close to mine. I didn't want to be right in her face, putting bees right down in my shop, right next to the house. I've always kept them here on the back of my property. That was why I was reticent about just picking the box up in the daytime and moving it, and just abandoning those bees. That's my plan. Tonight, I'm going to come out. I'm going to take the laying worker box, the drone laying box, whatever name we want to give it. I'm going to take it off the bottom board. I'm going to put the swarm on the bottom. I'm going to leave the queen confined for a day or two or three just to see if I can stabilize things. I've never done this. I'm going to put a queen excluder on top of the newspaper just in case I miss this queen yet again.

Then that brings up the question I asked you early on, can a virgin queen, an unmated queen, an undersized queen, can she get through a queen excluder? That whole purpose may be for nothing. Then my ultimate objective is threefold or so. It is to get those bees away from the house, out of just a bee colony down there too close to my house, to keep them from antagonizing my neighbor. It's to bring them back here and to get the swarm out, get the queen released, get the broodness started for them, and get them calmed down. Then to address what must still be about two and a half pounds of bees from that package, and see if I can get that drone laying situation under control.

Now the irony is I was going to make this ended here, but I think I'll come back to you and I'll go through some process of telling you how this story ended. I'm already out of time, or I would recap this contorted story with this multiple facets, but it would take me too long to recap it, and I would be too far beyond my allotted time of about 20 minutes. Can we talk about this again as soon as I can see if I can get this mess figured out? It just has not been plain beekeeping. Some of the basic rules have just not worked out. To get any comment, I'm always here. I love talking to you. This is Jim telling you bye until we can talk about this again.

[00:22:36] [END OF AUDIO]