Inserting the Drone Frame
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An empty frame at the edge of the brood nest gives the colony a chance to work off its building urge.
An empty frame at the edge of the brood nest gives the colony a chance to work off its building urge. It builds drone comb there, and that is exactly what makes the drone frame a tool. It is inserted early, around the time the goat willow blooms, at the latest when the honey super is added.
For one thing, fresh, white natural comb shows the colony is in a building and foraging mood. For another, the varroa mite clearly prefers drone brood over worker brood, and drone brood can be many times more heavily infested. The capped drone frame thus ties up a considerable share of the mites.
It is cut out as soon as more than half the cells are capped. The window after inserting it runs roughly from day 10 to day 24, so in practice every two to three weeks. Anyone who forgets it ends up breeding mites instead of removing them.