Thousands, Hundreds? of drones converging on a bee hive, my hypothesis. Narrated Version!
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- Опубліковано 28 лис 2024
- Yesterday I released this same video, and was curious why some viewers asked questions about temperature, time, and more. I thought I answered those questions in the narration.
Well, because I'm super sharp... I listened to part of the video today only to find out I left off the narration (';').
So, here is the narrated version, everything else is the same.
Sorry about that.
This information was also posted on the original video:
Frequent Questions I receive from viewers:
"Why are there thousands of drones entering my hive?
Can drones mate with a virgin queen inside the hive?"
CORRECTION: Drones from a single queen would all be her stock, it's workers that would represent variations based on drones the queen mated with. Sorry about that.
My thought is this -
This colony was split less than two weeks ago with capped queen cells inside.
Though it sounds like a swarm, the bulk of landing board activity is from drones entering and departing.
My hypothesis is, that a virgin queen in this colony may have made her mating flight today.
She would fly to a drone congregation area and become the center of interest for thousands of drones from colonies far and wide.
Drones follow queens so intensely that they form a comet that is often visible to people on the ground.
What if, even though the queen has completed her mating flight, and has copulated with as many drones as she cared to, hundreds if not thousands simply continued to follow her back to the original hive?
This is a pure guess on my part.
There is a normal amount of Drone-Comb inside this hive, less than 20% of this 10 frame triple deep hive. So, a drone laying queen is unlikely. An inspection next week "should" show eggs if today's activity is due to a mating flight.
You can put a virgin queen in a queen cage, attach her to a helium balloon and attract drones pretty fast. Maybe not in the concentrations that would be found in a DCA, but quite a few.
We also know that drones fly at a different altitude than workers do, and can therefore spot a queen headed through their "air space" pretty easily with their enormous eyes.
It seems reasonable that a drone-comet may not break off completely, and this could in theory, explain why a colony of bees with a young queen could be receiving all of these unwelcome visitors.
Further reading, DCAs may have as many as 2000 drones according to this study: link.springer....
What can you do if you don't want all of those freeloaders in your hive? You can put a drone excluder on the hive. I don't personally do that, but they do exist.
For those looking for Drone Excluders, here they are: www.betterbee.... ( I am not compensated for sharing this link ).
I'll be interested in your thoughts and observations.
I think you are spot on - the timing is too perfect to be coincidental, and they ONLY stormed that hive, out of all those you have, so they aren't just looking for a free feed from the nearest apiary to a local DCA. Midday, so they aren't returning home after an active day flying the DCA racetrack in the sky. No, the tail of the comet makes perfect sense.
Guess you'll find out for sure in a couple of weeks, but worth keeping an eye on them over the next few days in case of a repeat flight. It could be that she was still giving off the pheromone for openness for mating, and that might explain why they followed her home. Or it could just be that the pheromone lingers even when she has been sufficiently mated. It may be that it is grooming by her sisters and half-sisters who will deal with it.
We can't actually detect or measure that pheromone, at least that I am aware, so it is a possibility - I know some older beekeepers describe returning queens needing to have a mating sign removed before they can lay, which may be part of the process (although I've never seen any actual scientific research on that).
Well put, Phil. :)
At the Research Apiary three times ( all late spring) we had a Drone Rush during a research study on Drone drift. In all three times the receiving Hive was a recent split and had marked Drones from other Hives ( different colors) entering. The DCA is about 1000 yard due north. This confirmed to us that Drone drift during return mating flights is a major factor in mite distribution. In the balloon test (to find the DCA) we often brought down hundreds of Drones with the caged Queen.
That makes sense to me :) Thanks for sharing, Daniel!
Video and sound with his voice is perfect for me.
Hi Fred, I would say that yes they probably followed the queen back to the hive. Also as you said it had been split recently, the drones could take advantage of the lower number of guards on duty. Allowing them to feed and refuel, before continuing on their mating quest. Although I could be wrong as I haven’t studied this behaviour it’s only my guess. Thanks for sharing TrickyTrev 🇦🇺👍🐝🍯
I went to seach YT today because atm i have 1 hive where its the same situation. Lots of drones entering and hoovering outside. I also left closed queen cells(2) in the hive some days ago, the old queen is being replaced by the bees. The weather is sunny and perfect for mating. Thius thing happend 2 days ago as well, i stayed for a long while and i got calmer in the end.Thank you so much for this video!!
I think you just may have a new mated queen in there :) let us know what you see in about a week :)
@@FrederickDunn i wasnt sure about the "cell status", swarming or not, i checked the pattern of old queens egglaying, and i was pretty sure of tht they were gona replace her. Still ive been lookin out for a swarm, but instead i see this. (I dont wanna kill old queen, wanna learn more, and more, seeing how they are working). I will write whn i kn ow for sure about status inside. Have a great one! Love from Sweden
Hi fredrick. I totally agree. I have had major hive problems this year 2024 ending of winter early spring.
My Queen disappeared over winter and I was in a bind. Too early for drones and worried about laying workers appearing. This is my first winter i have gone through. I have 2 hives.
So to try to fix my dilemma I bought a queen introduction cage from Better Bee. I'm in Canada just 20 mins to USA Ogdensburg New York State. So I tried using my Queen from other hive and put a brood frame in the cage and put that in Queenless hive. I noticed about a week later my Queen was honking in distress so I took a look and noticed many dead bees on bottom of cage. I decided to put her back in her original hive but left the frame in and removed the cage. On the 8/10/2024 I checked my hive that was Queenless and noticed hundreds of drones even though there were no drone brood in that hive. So I gathered there might be a mated Queen in the Queenless hive and she had brought back all these drones. The next day on the 9th I noticed many dead bees in front of Queenless hive and opened that hive. First thing I noticed was on top brood box many bees were fanning their wings. That really gave me the clue that they were spreading pheromone through the hive. I also noticed that there had been a huge cleanup and all the frames comb looked great and clean but without any brood. And so I went down to bottom brood box and slowly went over the frames starting at frame one. To my surprise I saw a Queen! I quickly picked her up with my fingers because I was worried I would hurt her using a clip. I placed her in my Queen marking thingamajig and marked her green. I then placed the thingamajig on the frames to see how the bees would react. They started to flap their wings and crawled all over it. I then decided to while biting my tongue to release her. They quickly started to feed her. Oh what a relief!. However I was still concerned that there were still laying worker bees about. I didn't have time to think about putting her with some worker bees that were looking after her. oh well my bad. So I sat there watching what was going on after I closed the hive. All day Bees were being brought out dead or dying or still being stung by other bees. I noticed a whitish queen being dragged out and grabbed her off the bee that was dragging her. She wasn't the Queen I marked to my relief and she had deformed wing. i put her in alcohol as I noticed she was starting to move so she wasn't dead yet. I needed to put her out of her misery. Fingers crossed that the worker bees killed off the laying workers and I still have a beautiful Queen who is the daughter of my other Queen who survived winter. And for me that means good winter genes.
Sorry about my long rant and I had spoken a bit of this with you previously. Soo in answer to your question. They were drones that this Queen had brought back with her or followed her from the Drone comet. Thank you for this video as it brought me some hope. Oh yes I forgot to say that during this process I added a pheromone noodle to delay laying workers even though they did finally turn up. Again I say touch wood I hope she survives.
For those wanting to read a little more, here is a study: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10886-011-0034-1
It would make since that the drones would chase her all the way home. Just bc she is done mating doesn't mean they are. Very high quality video by the way. Nice job
Thanks, Peter.
I think you're exactly right. It's logical. The fact that you know they produced a virgin queen because you split them backs your theory.
Thanks! Follow up inspections will tell the tale a little better :)
Video and sound great for me. Thanks for the upload, Fred. It is mesmerizing listening to the bees.
Hi Frederick, these narrated videos are my favourite part of your channel. It makes me feel as if I’m there, in the sun watching one of nature’s wonders. Thank you for sharing 😁👍
Glad you like them!
@@FrederickDunn 😄😁
Fred, could it be a virgin Queen puts off a special pheromone that attracts drones and she didn’t get mated in her flight or that pheromone continued and they followed her back? I’m sure you know more about it than I do. I hope all those drones don’t eat their fill of honey while they’re in there, if they do that hive will need feeding. lol
I think they definitely followed her pheromone trail... it's something we can learn much more about, but I think it can also indicate a successfully mated queen's return to the hive :)
I just noticed this today, which is OCTOBER 6th. Not like it's early in the season. I have two hives and it is happening just like your vid at both of them. We had 2 cold rainy days and then today it is sunny and close to 70 (I'm in Connecticut). I haven't done an inspection in the hive for awhile, but the girls have been bringing in tons of pollen and there's been a good population of bees in both hives (I have an observation window). There have been no fighting or robbing indications, everything has seemed pretty normal, except I've been seeing a lot of bees walking away from the hives the past month. I know that can be a sign of mites and illness but I've used Formic Pro, oxalic acid sponges, and Formic Pro again (month of Sept), so it doesn't seem like they should be overwhelmed with mites. Anyway, that's another issues. I am mystified by this drone thing though, and I know they are eating because they've about drained the half gallon of sugar syrup I put on the hive!
I hope you are able to solve your departure puzzle. All you can go is keep an eye on them and see if you notice any identifiable issues.
@@FrederickDunn Thank you. Later today, I looked in the observation windows (it's only been a few days since my last look), and things were VERY different. I think your theory may be right. The population in my "tan" hive is WAY down and I could see a queen cell. They just may have raised a new queen who came back from a mating flight with all those drones today. My "green" hive is close to the tan one, so maybe the drones just decided to freeload in both. The green hive still has LOTS of bees--actually it looks like it has more now than it did a few days ago. Maybe some from the tan hive drifted over to the more successful green one? I am assuming the tan hive doesn't have much of a chance of making it, even with a newly mated queen. It's so late in the season. They are both top bar hives, so it is far more difficult to try combining them than with a Langstroth. My husband thinks it might not be a good idea to combine them anyway, as the tan girls might have viruses (there are quite a few dead bees in front of the tan hive). Sigh. If they make it or not (hoping at least the green girls make it), I am switching to Langstroth hives next Spring. It is far easier to do inspections in those than in the Cathedral top bar hives that I have. This is my 3rd year of beekeeping. I watch all of your vids and have learned a lot. I also am a fan of Randy Oliver's vids and some others, I have a big library of bee books, and I attend monthly "Field Days" at the apiary where I bought my bees. I'm really trying to be a bee KEEPER and not just a bee HAVER. As someone told me "beekeeping has a very steep learning curve". So true. I apologize to my girls for being a bad beekeeper and hope to do better next year. Thank you again for all your generous sharing of information!
Ok i went searching for "when drone bee's fly" because this is happening in my #1 Hive right now (6/10/23). Im worried that the hive will split again as its already split at least twice this year. The first time i could do nothing as they balled up in the top of a neighbors pine tree. The second swarm i was able to easily capture from a low hanging branch on one my peach trees and that bunch is doing great as Hive #2. Funny thing is that all my hives have plenty of growing room and resources stored up. Hopefully it's just the worker's replacing the queen and not another split getting ready to go. Im going to do an inspection tomorrow. If i find two Queens im catching one and making a split. Fingers crossed.
You can provide space, configure the hive for low congestion and they often still swarm. Remember that they really want to reproduce, we're kind of in the way of that activity.
Had the exact same thing happen this summer (2022). Made a sit in a 5 frame nuc , with a queen cell. A couple weeks later there were huge numbers of drones. They were everywhere. I agree with your hypothesis
Yes, this has been reinforced every time I've come upon this activity. There are also extra foragers just joining in and taking up residence with the newly mated queen. It's very interesting.
@@FrederickDunn their behavior and numbers I described it as looking like they were robbing.
Years ago I thought I had found the arrival of a swarm landing on an apple tree but they were all drones and so I never went home for my swarm kit, It may have been that a queen took a rest after mating at the DCA and they had been following her, or she knew she was being followed back to her hive with males continuing to mate with her and landed somewhere for some reason, I guess I will never know
I'm with you on the theory that a queen was being followed back to her hive. Too bad you couldn't locate her in the cluster.
That’s a lot of bees 🐝.
Could the summer solstice have set off some trigger in the drones' behavior?
"Longest day of the year, guys, follow any scent trail you find."
I like the narrated version better. Lol!! Great job Fred!!
Thanks!
Hi Fred, just another observation. When the slow motion is on the drones coming out of the hive, their admin’s look full. The guards are only checking the workers returning as well. Just to add to my previous statement/observation. Thanks again TrickyTrev 🇦🇺👍🐝🍯
I definitely think they were fed there, I also think they followed the queen home :)
Well, they're clearly just paying their respects!
Ok then.
hold on while I get my hearing aids ;) wow! 19 minutes later a deep voice of Bee wisdom
I had a drone kill off recently in one of my hives. Even the pupae were not spared. Perhaps another hive was purging their drones and it happened to coincide with the queen pheromones so the lads were just looking for a new home and caught wind of your queen. As to the drone kill off I thought it could be due to unusual rainy weather, keeping them hive bound and triggering a "there isn't enough room" response, or too many varroa. I pulled the full honey frames and gave them a dose of Apiguard to be safe.
The Drone bee is the only male bee in the bee colony.
True, drones are males, all others are female.
My daughter and I just experienced the same thing with one of our hives but, It was a hive with an established queen and it happened 3 days in a row. We now have a lot of dead drones in front of the hive. We really have no idea what happened.
Sounds like another issue. 3 days in a row would be extremely taxing on that colony.
I think you are right, and you'll know in a couple of days when you do an inspection. if eggs, correct, if no eggs, back to the drawing board....
I agree, it will all come down to the follow-up inspection. The following day, drone numbers were back to normal. All interesting, thanks for commenting.
If they were one hive before, maybe joining up or confused? But it almost looks like an invasion but with very little fight from the main hive, maybe since they're family.
They're smelling stuff from the queen that's just confusing them but they mean no harm since there's not a huge angry fight against them?
Just a guess, I'm only a bee keeper wannabe.. 🐝🍯💙💜🌼😁👍🌼💜💙🍯🐝
Drones never fight. , they are either accepted or rejected by resident bees.
thank you fred i now can settle my mind a bit . I am in zimbabwe a swarm took of a week ago then that happened i caught all the drones into a bucket a nd left only a hole that a worker bee ca n go through two days the drones were left some died and a few flew out.i counted about 600 drones could have followed back the new qeen.❤😊😊
All good, thank you
I had a similar experience a few weeks ago. I moved my 4 hives from my garden to a local farm a few miles away. In their place, I erected a new greenhouse. A full two weeks later 100's and 100's of drones descended from nowhere swirling around my new greenhouse where my hives had once been two weeks before. Where they come from and why they came I have no idea. There were no missing queens from the hives I'd moved, they hadn't swarmed so I doubt they followed a queen. If they had she'd have gone back to the hive she came from. I did manage to capture it on video and seeing this video struck a chord with me. How strange.
On June 1st I had a queen emerge after a swarm. I saw the worker cleaning the cell out during an inspection. Then on the 7th I experienced my own drone convergence. It is happening again now (9th). Could this be a case where she went back out for a second mating flight or is it more likely a second queen mucking up the works???
More likely to be another queen.
Hey Fred, I would agree that they are probably following the recently mated queen back to her hive. I don’t have any study’s or anything to back up my thoughts on that, it’s just what seems logical to me (bees don’t always follow what I think is logical though🙃).
One thing you said that I did question though was when you said that technically a queen could produce drones with several different genetic stocks. My thinking was that since a drone comes from an infertile egg (doesn’t have a daddy, just a grandfather) wouldn’t or shouldn’t they all look the same? They would only have their mothers genetics and the drone that their mothers egg was fertilized with. Am I wrong about this? Again, just my thoughts.
Thanks for a great video and for making us all think about It.
David Shrewsberry
Oops.. did I say that? I meant workers from various stock based on her drone matings. That's an oops... the queen produces drones and her sons are all hers. You're right. :)
How do you really know if the queen even leaves the hive to mate?
Maybe all these drones are descending on a virgin queen to mate with her.
Just my thoughts.
It's unlikely that they could find her pheromone and trail in during such a short period of time for a focused event. Unless... the queen made a trip outside. I think after mating makes more sense than them visiting a hive in hopes that it's the very moment a virgin queen may go out.
how did you count em!? i htink youre probably right though!!! I have seen this same thing.
It's a guesstimate... and thanks.
All drones produced by a given queen should look identical. Since they are from unfertilized eggs they are genetically identical to the queen.
Absolutely true. Thank you, I wasn't clear on that. Great comment!
Would it be possible that it’s a protection swarm per say for the newly mated queen to make it back to the hive so she is not eaten by a predator
That's a great concept, but I don't know of any support for that theory.
all about the pheremone
Agree :)
They came to be feed. Why all at once I do not know but they are there and being fed.
This is a bit OT Fred but-- I found a
They may be disposing of drone larvae as they are finished with them. You may also see adult drones dead in front of the hive, or other developing larvae pushed aside. It's easy to discern if they are workers or drones by the eyes. Do inspections at sunrise to see what you can find before they fly and clean things up :)
@@FrederickDunn Thank you Fred. I was thinking that but it's nice to have my thoughts confirmed by someone way more knowledgeable than I. I saved the poor critter in alcohol for later examination.
@@cedainty Could be you have a hive that uncaps diseased lavae and disposes of them.
i had the same thing happened in my hive last sunday
I had similar but not quite so many, at the entrance of a hive that had a small caste swarm. There was a virgin queen inside Or She could have just mated.
I'm leaning more towards "just-mated" :)
This is happening to one of the hives i have right now . Any idea how to stop it . I have decreased the entrance but they arent letting up.
I don't try to stop it. They will move on again.
Clearly those drones are just stalkers. Then the realized they could probably get a free lunch, too. 😜
maybe she didn't get mated and the drones since it.
We have a similar situation with one of our hives. The hive had swarm cells a month ago and was over populated.
We did a split and removed all the swarm cells, leaving the queen. The hive swarmed the first week of June.
Upon an inspection the second week of June we confirmed that the hive had swarmed and found a young vergin queen. Today we did an inspection and found hundreds of drones in the hive.
We also found eggs on the bottom brood chamber, confirming that the queen was matted.
How can we get rid of the drones?
The drones are occupied 2/3 of the hive?
Our honey stores are depleting fast.
Any ideas?
I think they will get rid of the drones on their own if they really can't afford them. As pushy as the drones are, the nurse bees are capable of refusing to feed them.
If you have an entry gate disk on the hive, could you shake out the frames (after temporarily caging the queen), and turn the entrance gate to queen/drone excluder and the drones wouldn't be able to get back in, and would go elsewhere. If you have several hives nearby turn their gates first.
Ok it toke me going true all sorts off bee books very old and new, the drone attraction is the Miasma fermon. The smell she release during the Nuptial flight. However something went wrong by nature, saying she might be a infertile and resulting to be a only drone laying Queen. I never had a case like this my self, but yes it exists
She was laying within days, so the theory of being infertile and producing only drone eggs would not apply in this specific case. Thanks for sharing what you've read about.
oh, it's just a Frat party.
(';')( ';')... interessstinnng.
I agree with your hypothesis however one thing did occur to me. Doesn’t a queen normally go pretty far away to mate? Are the drones capable of following that far?
No, they are not. A queen can fly much faster than the drones. Sometime she enters and flies too fast through the congregation area and has to turn around and do it again.. because the drones couldn't follow. I'm watching this stuff many years. They don't follow queens home.
This is normal drone behavior.. l think they do this on a perfect condition day. It only looks like there's thousands.. but there are hundreds, flying in and out.
Mr. Dunn put a comment trap. Nobody that knows this stuff can explain it in a comment. I can only try. It's an optical allusion.. like a gigant swarm flying in the air.. than they land and you have a frame of bees.
Yes, the queen "can" fly up to 9 miles (that's the current documented record) but drones are apt to follow a queen's scent at any path along her flight and she can collect a group of strays. This also means that she "could" be attracting drones on her return flight that are much more local. Drones are pretty limited, max flight distances are about 2.5 miles. Just because a queen "can" make a longer flight, doesn't means he does. Also, drones that have made a long-distance flight, would return with a high demand for fuel/food. This would cause them to desparately rush into a hive. I think the recently mated queen picked up a trail of drones that followed her home.
Yeah, she left a chem trail like an airplane. Drones fly only 3-4h per day. 90% of them stops after 3PM. 90% of virgin queens flies out between 12 and 3pm. (could be an hour later in your climate)
You have all those cameras.. it should be easy to film it. I'm just sitting in front of the hives and waiting, watching. And I know a place where drones drop down happy
I don't know what happened, but I know what's going to happen[queue funeral music for drones here].
They just flew off again, no dead drones in front of this hive.
Hello Master ✨🤩
Well Fred, let me explain the facts about the Bees and the Bees!
The Female did not get out and the boys just did not want to wait until she take flight.
They feel, first come, first get serviced.
OR
You left one of those BetterBee Queen Pheromone tubes in the hive.
Love is in the air.
I bet he played with that pheromone.
Ok ok, I see what you guys are doing here... no, I wasn't teasing then in with synthetic QMP, but I do have some new thoughts on that.
@@FrederickDunn i think it's a combination of a day with good drone flying conditions.. the time of the year (other hives starting to push them out).. a split hive with a virgin (they will let them in).. a day with many drones drifting from other hives.
But drones don't fallow queens to their hives after mating. Queens fly way too fast for drones to be able to catch up. It's only when she slows down.. like in the DCA that drones have a chance
yep yep😎
Still can't hear :)
Sorry... it must be or have been at your end?
Human logic doesn't apply to bees. Maybe summer soltice ??? Maybe your right. Great video you make people think.
No video…???
Yes, there is video.
@@FrederickDunn Yes it did eventually appear! For an hour however there was a black scream with the writing of « No flux » on it. I wander why. That happens..it happened a few times with your videos and with a few other channels…🤔🤔🤔🤔
Sorry to have bothered you with this.
Video is good but no sound.
I am getting sound
@@lgalardi same.
Can’t be for mating….Drones don’t mate at the hive. But they leave and go back and forth during the day from the hive to the congregation.
Why do they go back to the hive? To eat and restore themselves… logical explanation!
How long did that drone congregation stay and was there evidence of them being fed or some of them? The only unusual thing in this case is that they are in a bunch all going at once…!
I think the question to ask is « why all of the drones take their lunch brake at the same time a day the same place…????
They look like a hungry bunch to me!
My two cents.
Thank you for the question, Me Dunn.
I think they followed the recently mated queen back to this hive. The event was less than 2 hours in duration, and this is the only hive the drones poured into. Yesterday, the hive was completely normal, and the drones were absent. Also, no dead on the ground in front of this hive. I think it's pheromone based, even local airborn drones will just tag-along when QMP is in the air. TRUE, they do not mate unless they are on the wing.
But this can and has happened without the factor of a newly mated queen returning to it’s hive…???
Could be a factor but not necessarily, I would think… no…?
Thus the question: « Why would it happen, when there is no involvement of a mated queen »?
❤️ 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝 ❤️
However nowadays with the new generation pesticides, they obstruct the nerve centrum of insects and the results are devastating.
Clearly those drones are just stalkers. Then the realized they could probably get a free lunch, too. 😜
No happy hour