The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Bees & Beekeeping => Topic started by: Laurieston on November 01, 2014, 11:00:09 pm
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Here's a thought I came across the other day.
If I cull drone brood in an attempt to reduce the amount of varroa in my colony, don't I tend to reduce the varroa who prefer to breed in drone cells and therefore encourage the varroa who by instinct favour worker cells? Didn't Darwin write about selective evolution and I am helping select which varroa successfully reproduce - worker laying ones!
Hummm
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I tend to agree with you , I gave up breeding honey consuming drones for Varroa to infest when the frames could have raised worker bees instead If I'd used standard brood wax instead of drone wax. Plus the queen only has so many eggs in her life , so why waste them on excess drone brood that occupied workers efforts who could have been better employed elsewhere in the hive ?
Purposely encouraging additional drone brood production must have some effect on the strength of the hive & it's capabilities . It is often argued by some that the varroa reduction gained by freezing sealed infected drone brood is somehow worth it. i considered the loss of two brood comb faces in the brood box as not worthwhile even if I double brooded the hives.
It also saved me from thinking of buying my own wax mould for making drone wax ( I already had the standard mould & queen cup forms )
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I think the phrase to answer that is "intergrated pest management" - should be part of a plan to control varroa alongside thymol / oxalic acid / icing sugar / hive clean / grannies home brew etc etc not just a stand alone treatment.
You do need drones and I think people are now realising they don't just sit around eating all the pies and waiting for their one moment of glory. That said if I had a hive with DWV (very sad to see) and a load of drone brood, the brood would be out and treatment put in place.