Drone Saturation... best practices, looking for input

[Nature Coast Beek]

I've been thinking about this for a while and was wondering if a certain type of hive would have an advantage over another? Would say a TBH with all naturally drawn comb and large size have an advantage over a Lang? What do the more serious queen breeders do as far as drone saturation? Are drone cell frames pulled from the production hives and placed into a specific hive on the rim of a mating yard? How important are out-yards in the compass directions surrounding the mating yard? Any input regarding drone saturation best practices are of interest.

[AllenF]

Almost all commercial guys run langs.   If you want more drones, you can throw in a couple of green drone frames, keeping a couple full some hives in the area keeps a mating yard full of drones. 

[Troutdog]

dr larry Connor did a lot of work in this area in his new book bee sex essentials he has two chapters on drones and talks about rearing drones for breeding. the technique which i have not tried is to wire cage a queen into a frame and the workers will spoil the drones keeping them well fed etc. Dr Connor ran an  insemination program for years.
drone flooding is tricky as it seems you need a few yards , and the mating yard is best supported by a few of your yards nearby to keep up your genetics.
genetics for the drone, drone frames, 14 day cycle,  requires a bit of forethought and some random factors in alignment.

the dca should be about 50 percent your stock as that is prob the most you  can hope for unless you are in a really secluded area or island like the buckfast folks in ontario.

to do this you would have your mating yard surrounded by your production yards.  Eventually i will do the reearch to figure out the magnetic field component for the dcas and be able to do scans for this. placing your drones near the dca would save a lot of time and insure proper flooding.
tbh are not better or worse than any other, my preference is langs with drone brood which is easily harvested and again a trapped queen will make the nurse bees really feed the boys. points on the compas absolutely in a radius, look  into the dca research done with the weather ballons and see what they came up with.  Some folks have had good luck finding these areas on their own like old timer bee hunters (liners).

having thought on this myself yet being a small hobbyist, i though to flood the local area club with my stock and start that way as i built up to more controlled scenario.

luck
td

[Nature Coast Beek]

Trout,

Thanks for the input. I think collecting drone frames and stacking them into select hives in locations surrounding the yard is the way to go. I suppose a series of drone hives circling the mating yard at 100 yds, 1/2 mile and 1-2 miles is ideal. Interesting ideas on queen isolation and drone feeding are interesting.