Special Drone Brood Frame - Dadant Blatt

01 · BUILD

Wire and foundation above, open window below

A cross bar runs a little below halfway. The upper part arrives with the wire already run vertically and that is where the wax foundation goes — foundation is not included. The lower part is left without wire or wax, and that empty gap is the cue the colony reads: given free space, it draws the wider drone cell.

02 · COMPATIBILITY

Measure the top bar: 47 cm is Blatt, 48 cm is US

Measure the top bar of a frame you already run. 47 cm means Dadant Blatt, the French and Italian size, and this is your frame; 48 cm means Dadant US, and that missing centimetre is enough to leave it without proper support. It measures 47 × 30 cm: not Langstroth, not Layens. For a Langstroth brood box there is the plastic drone frame.

03 · HIVE HEALTH

Varroa enters drone brood eight to twelve times more often

The most quoted figure is around nine times; a choice trial measured 8.3 times more mites per cell and an invasion study reached 11.6. Two measured facts sit behind it: drone brood gets more nurse visits — Journal of Insect Science, 2024 — and spends longer under the capping, so each female leaves 2.2 to 2.6 offspring against 1.3-1.4 in worker brood.

04 · TIMING

Capped around day 10, emerging around day 24

This is the figure that decides the outcome. Counting from the egg, drone brood is capped around day 10 and emerges around day 24: removal belongs between those two dates, and leaving it past day twenty is cutting it fine. Lift it capped, freeze it, scrape it and put the frame back in its slot. Run late and you release the varroa you concentrated.

05 · QUEEN REARING

The same frame in reverse: making drones instead of removing them

In drone mother colonies you want the opposite — those drones born and flying. Allow time: a drone takes about 24 days to emerge and another twelve to mature, so it is set up some five weeks ahead of the virgins. Flooding the mating area with selected drones improves genetic control, but it is not the same as controlled mating.

06 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It arrives assembled and wired but without foundation: the sheet for the upper part is yours to fit. The timber is apiary-grade pine, with the knots and saw marks that come with it. And it is a management part, not a treatment: it only works during the drone-rearing season, it ties you to a visit every two or three weeks, and it replaces neither mite counts nor authorised veterinary medicines.