Bibba

[Beefriendly]

My understanding is that you can increase the likelihood of your Virgin Queens mating with your preferred Drones by placing a Drone frame in the hive you want your Virgin to mate with..

Tosh.
Me thinks you need read Koeniger, Mating Biology of Honey Bees. Particularly the bit where they show the experiments demonstrating that virgin queens travel to more distal DCA's than the local drones DCA's.

 

[B+.]

This really is fabulous stuff!
(

I just made a playlist of all the IWF videos ([https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbr7jvL12x96CATXF3u59e_lvLETOD6Vq) - not in any particular order

 

[TooBee...]

Tosh.
Me thinks you need read Koeniger, Mating Biology of Honey Bees. Particularly the bit where they show the experiments demonstrating that virgin queens travel to more distal DCA's than the local drones DCA's.

Then based on your greater knowledge (reading, Koeniger, etc.) and experience (from having done what I have not yet), I concede that what I have read from various blogs, etc. (mostly US from memory) - about saturating the area with desirable Drones to increase the likelihood that the Virgin Queen will mate with a greater proportion of these desirable Drones, is utter "Tosh", meaning it is incorrect in the extreme and should be completely disregarded... thanks.

PS: Although... I supposed I could still contain my mother Queen(s) to a Drone frame(s) and release one frame a mile (or more?) N, S, E and W. To save me buying and reading the book, do you know the name of this Research / experiments which Koeniger references in his book, or do you know, of the top of your head, how far a Queen could travel from her Hive to other non-local Drone Congregation Areas, or are all DCA in the vicinity of existing Hives (which is what I thought / assumed)?

 

[Beefriendly]

Latest outage seems to have lost my original reply...so here we go again.
Virgins fly to more distal DCA than drones from their own apiary. This is thought to be an evolutionary strategy to avoid inbreeding.
Hence the drones from your own apiary will rarely mate with your virgin queens. There are,of course, always exceptions to the rule, but these are best not relied upon routinely.

 

[Finman]

Latest outage seems to have lost my original reply...so here we go again.
Virgins fly to more distal DCA than drones from their own apiary. This is thought to be an evolutionary strategy to avoid inbreeding.
Hence the drones from your own apiary will rarely mate with your virgin queens. There are,of course, always exceptions to the rule, but these are best not relied upon routinely.

I remember that virgins fly to nearest drone swarm, and do not risk their life. According modern knowledge.
Most mating flight duration is 10-20 minutes, and queens cannot fly very far in this time.

 

[Beefriendly]

I remember that virgins fly to nearest drone swarm, and do not risk their life. According modern knowledge.
Most mating flight duration is 10-20 minutes, and queens cannot fly very far in this time.

Nope Finman, they fly further than the drones from their own hive. Modern experiments researched in Austria. The experiments were documented by Koeniger in Mating biology of Honey Bees.

 

[Finman]

The experiments were documented by Koeniger in Mating biology of Honey Bees.

You find several researches from internet too.

 

[B+.]

You find several researches from internet too.

Gudran Koeniger presented this at the National Honey Show a few years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI26DLS2CyM)

 

[fatshark]

And it's here in print: Koeniger N. et al., (2005) The nearer the better? Drones (Apis mellifera) prefer nearer drone congregation areas. Insect. Soc. 52:31-35

Paywalled I'm afraid, but only £35

... but the abstract is pretty informative.