# Drone congregation Area



## GRIMBEE (Apr 3, 2007)

How far do the drones fly away from the hive to make a congregation area for mating?


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## BigDaddyDS (Aug 28, 2007)

0.9 to 1.8 miles from the drone's parent hive, with 1.5 miles being most common.


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## LEAD PIPE (May 22, 2005)

Grimbee

Are you saying that my Trumbull drones arn't good enough for your Stratford queens?

If your bees turn darker we will know that drones fly at least that far. Perhaps they are meeting in the middle somewhere.


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## BjornBee (Feb 7, 2003)

I have always questioned the traditional information in books. What makes me think this is.....

Why do drones congregate in hives rearing queen cells? Why are drones allowed to hang out in hives getting ready to swarm and supersede?

If a queen flies that far away, then inbreeding would be not a problem as it is.

In nature, the next hive may be 100 yards or a couple miles away. So yes, i think the queen CAN fly that far if needed. But bees are opportunistic in nature with everything they do. So does a queen fly that far always? Or just as far as she needs to?

Some have suggested the queen can sense if a drone is related to her. But if this is true, why have inbreeding problems? Or does this just suggest that inbreeding is the continual breeding from within a closed genetic pool?

So does a queen fly that far if you have one hive, and the next hive is a couple miles away? Or does she fly a shorter distance when you have a 20 hives with different genetics at play?

I personally have my out-yards and drone yards at 2 mile spacings. So if a queen from one yard flies half the distance and the drone from another yard does the same, they will meet about a mile in the middle. That's what I do. But I have serious doubts if this all works as the books suggest with queens flying miles outside the range of drones, etc.


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## brooksbeefarm (Apr 13, 2008)

*drone congregation areas*

I know the books say the drones have this congregation area and probabiy do,but has anyone on this forum ever seen one?I!ve had bees off and on sense 1964 and have never witness a congregation area and I!m out on the farm every day? What do you look for and how would you know if you found one?


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## GRIMBEE (Apr 3, 2007)

You wouldn't see one if you wanted to. The queen and drone meet 200 to 300 feet in the air. That makes it tough to see them.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Put a queen in a cage and tie the cage to a few helium birthday balloons and tie a 250 foot string to the balloons... walk it around until you see drones streaming to the queen, that will be the Drone area


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

BjornBee...
I totally agree. I only have one yard here, my back yard. I raise drones in my Carniolian hives, and raise queens from the Minnisota Hygenic and Italian hives. In a month, after this round of queens, I'm going to reverse that and raise drones from the Minnisota Hygenic and Italian hives, and raise a couple queens from my Carniolian hives. I'm pretty sure it's going to work out good, but time will tell as I get queens coming out and laying.


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## notaclue (Jun 30, 2005)

I would really like to know how to find a DCA other than walk around with my eyes up and my ears open.


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## brooksbeefarm (Apr 13, 2008)

*Drone congregation area*

Good idea Ray.I have always wondered who discovered this and how?A person who ask a question is only stupid for a moment,A person who does not ask questions, is stupid forever.I don!t know where I heard this but it changed my way of thinking and doing things.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

brooksbeefarm said:


> I know the books say the drones have this congregation area and probabiy do,but has anyone on this forum ever seen one?I!ve had bees off and on sense 1964 and have never witness a congregation area and I!m out on the farm every day? What do you look for and how would you know if you found one?


I don't think that what i saw was a congrigation area, but I did see a bunch of drones trying to mate w/ a queen in one of my beeyards in SC a few years ago. At first I didn't know what i was witnessing. I thought, perhaps, that it was some dragonflys chasing bees, as they do sometimes. But when the clump fell to earth I saw what they were. Then they took to the sky again. This was late in the afternoon in SC in April.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

How far do swarms go from the parent hive? I mean in a feral bee situation where the bees choose? If the DCA is about 1.5 miles from the hive, it must be 1.5 miles from some other hive... right? Does that mean, or could you begin to conclude that hives in the wild would be about three miles apart? That would mean that a swarm would have to move three miles from the parent hive... and I doubt that this is true... maybe. I suppose anything like this would be very difficult to figure out, unless you were a humming bird and could follow them.


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## SWM (Nov 17, 2009)

Larry Connor addresses this topic in his October ABJ column beginning on page 1083. According to him, queens fly much farther to mate than drones from the same colonies.


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

FWIW, This article abstract reports confirmed a mating distance of 20 km in NW Alberta, Canada in 1984. I have read in other sources that the drone _can_ fly 10 miles and the queen 13 miles for mating. Seems to be a lot of conflicting info out there.


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## tanksbees (Jun 16, 2014)

After I split three hives earlier in the year I found at least 5 or 6 dead drones in the yard with their junk ripped off right around the time when the queens were mating.

IMHO either the DCA is right above my house, or this theory is BS. I have also witnessed the drones following the queen back to the hive.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

RayMarler said:


> BjornBee...
> I totally agree. I only have one yard here, my back yard. I raise drones in my Carniolian hives, and raise queens from the Minnisota Hygenic and Italian hives. In a month, after this round of queens, I'm going to reverse that and raise drones from the Minnisota Hygenic and Italian hives, and raise a couple queens from my Carniolian hives. I'm pretty sure it's going to work out good, but time will tell as I get queens coming out and laying.


The breeding I did that year, I ended up with what I called two-toned drones. The drones were both Black and Gold, in one drone, something I'd never seen or heard of. That proved to me that queens only fly as far as needed to do the deed, and I whole heartedly disagree with those books that say queens fly such and such distance to help prevent mating with a brother. That really does not even make logical sense, but I figure it must satisfy peoples feelings about inbreeding or line-breeding scenarios. 

Ray Olivarez has a mating yard in Orland CA that he sets nucs out directly under a known DCA. If queens fly so far away, then why would he do this? Drone mating cones chasing queens can be seen quite frequently over his mating yard when the queens are flying. Randy Oliver has taken pictures of it with his cell phone.

I hold fast to the idea that queens only fly as far as needed to get mated.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

The drone is out of the hive for about 15-20 min at a time, about 5 min flight there, and back, leaving about 10 minutes of time actually hanging out in the congregating site. 
The farther they fly, the less time they actually have to hang out looking for queens. I would suspect most congregating sites are around the mile or closer... otherwise how would it logistically actually work out? Only so much time between refills.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Honey Bee Drone Flyways and Congregation Areas: Radar Observations
Gerald M. Loper, Wayne W. Wolf and Orley R. Taylor, Jr.
Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society
Vol. 65, No. 3 (Jul., 1992), pp. 223-230


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

When two easily distinguished breeds of bees are arranged in a test pattern, mating can be observed and shows a fall-off with distance.


The conclusion:


Cite:
Spatial Dynamics of the Honey Bee Mating System (Apis mellifera L.)
Author(s): Gareth A. Rowell, Orley R. Taylor, Jr. and Milissa A. Long-RowellSource: Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Jul., 1992), pp. 218-222Published by: Allen Press on behalf of Kansas (Central States) Entomological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25085359


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

Drones are welcome in almost any hive during the mating season and can leapfrog vast distances. I expect a proportion of every community has an innate wanderlust and though most drones you see in a hive are probably sons of the queen, some will have come from neighbouring hives and some will have come from afar.


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## wcubed (Aug 24, 2008)

One way to find congregation areas is to drive around and look for purple martins feeding 50 to 100 feet up in the air at mid afternoon.
Walt


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## dsegrest (May 15, 2014)

mbc said:


> Drones are welcome in almost any hive during the mating season and can leapfrog vast distances. I expect a proportion of every community has an innate wanderlust and though most drones you see in a hive are probably sons of the queen, some will have come from neighbouring hives and some will have come from afar.


Don't forget a laying worker can produce a drone.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

It is so funny how many different answers there are when you have a question about bees. It is given that bees recognize bees from their own hive, so I can accept that a queen would refuse a drone from her hive, if she could.... Or, that a drone recognizes a queen from his own hive and doesn't chase her unless there are no others. If the drones are usually inclined to fly 1.5 miles to a congregating area and queens fly either less or more than that then she would not run into drones from her own hive. The congregating areas could all form from drones going 1.5 miles from their hive even if the hives are close together. Like, if you drew a circle with a radius of 1.5 miles around a hive, and then did that for all the hives you knew about, where the circles intersected or overlapped would be a DCA prone area. Depending on how many hives were around, the DCAs could be near or far from the hive and it wouldn't matter, so long as the queens never stopped at the ones 1.5 miles away. All conjecture and speculation.... I'm trying to figure out what wild bees would do, because that is most likely the best answer for the bees.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

JWC, thanks for posting that. Gerry loper showed a 15min film of this in action at the recent WAS conference.....the work they did was not so easy to do with 16 mm film and a 4' radar dish. I will see if I can get a copy and permission to put online.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

The idea that in the air, a queen recognizes and avoids drones she is related to is claimed over and over, but I've never seen any data supporting the assumption.

The queen does tend to fly further than drones, and drones tend to congregate in a colony with a cell/virgin (drones not necessarily originating from the hive). These mechanisms help minimize a queen mating with her brother, but I don't think there is any data to support that the queen actively chooses individual mates.....the flight of the drone is really like sperm racing to get to the egg first. The drones are equipped with big eyes to spot a queen.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

deknow said:


> The idea that in the air, a queen recognizes and avoids drones she is related to is claimed over and over, but I've never seen any data supporting the assumption.
> 
> The queen does tend to fly further than drones, and drones tend to congregate in a colony with a cell/virgin (drones not necessarily originating from the hive). These mechanisms help minimize a queen mating with her brother, but I don't think there is any data to support that the queen actively chooses individual mates.....the flight of the drone is really like sperm racing to get to the egg first. The drones are equipped with big eyes to spot a queen.


This may seem like a sideline, but really, it could be why there are so many divergent answers. My only problem with scientists, and it is only a problem with the most hard core fundamentalist scientists, is that they believe that animals are like little furry pocket calculators with built in programs. I look at a beaver and I see a civil engineer crossed with a lumberjack. In keeping bees, which I figured were just bugs.... my theory of smart animals did not extend to bugs at the time, I get the feeling that I have taken responsibility for a miniature city full of tiny flying people. They are smart, they plan, they execute plans. I figure that if we, humans, are animals (mammals) and we can think, it can not be said that animals don't think.

So..... If you can accept that bees do think, it would explain why we can't pin down their behaviors. They aren't cows, or Pomeranians, they are foxes and beavers, they adapt, they are flexible.... which means that they recognize when they need to change their behavior... They have evolved with the ability to adapt. Randy Oliver talks about the genetic diversity in a feral hive that allows them, through phenotypes, to adapt to different situations. The genotype... the shape of the bee, how many legs it has... this is set... but the color, the way the bee uses these parts, that is phenotype, and that is flexible. So, if a bee is smart, has sexual preference, recognizes a strong trait and is attracted to that we can explain some of the breeding behaviors... they are logical, the magic is blown away by understanding.

Now, the bad news about phenotype flexibility... the domestication of bees. When we interfere, we change what decisions the bees make. If there is a full feeder right in the hive, they don't need to forage... they breed with bees that don't need to forage in a similar manner, and the phenotype starts excluding bees that are good foragers.... We treat for pests, and the phenotype starts excluding behaviors that deal with mites. We keep bees in hives ten feet apart, and the phenotype supports robbing, which supports the spread of disease. Nature will do that when it senses a population density that is too high. This has been proven with rats and almost every other creature. When they live in a population density that is to high, disease spreads.... the germs are like mites, they need a specific environment in which to thrive. We provide them the ability to move from hive to hive easily.

Wild bees are free from our influence, their decisions have to do with survival. If a hive gets mites they deal with them, or they die. If they die, the phenotype that made them less able to deal with mites dies too, or recedes.... because they can't breed. The ones that can resist mites do breed, and the feral population becomes mite resistant, through the flexibility of the phenotype.

So, back to DCA's, smart bees, and the distance a swarm goes from its parent hive.... If they are thinkers, and their phenotype is adjusted to work in their environment.... and environments are different, what is happening to bees, has less to do with pesticides and more to do with domestication and micro management. If we let them live naturally they will adjust their phenotype to the environment, they will breed with feral bees that are already supremely fit for that area..... but if there are no feral bees to do this, and we make them live in an unnatural way, we don't allow the diversity of genetics needed in a drone congregating area, then the bees would become domestic.... maybe....


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I think there is just a wee bit of wild extrapolation and dependance on rather loosely connected analogies here. "Hard core fundamentalist scientists" is about as profound an oxymoron as can be had.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I have read in other sources that the drone can fly 10 miles and the queen 13 miles for mating. Seems to be a lot of conflicting info out there. 

I don't think it's contradictory, it's just that reality has a lot of variables. What they CAN do and what the SOMETIMES do and what the USUALLY do are often very different things.

"Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth." --Blaise Pascal


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

crofter said:


> I think there is just a wee bit of wild extrapolation and dependance on rather loosely connected analogies here. "Hard core fundamentalist scientists" is about as profound an oxymoron as can be had.


More than a wee bit I'm afraid.  The fundamentalist scientists will argue that an animal is reactionary, that it does what it does because of some hardwired program... it is a pocket calculator, cant be happy, cant be sad. Yes, they exist, and it is surprising, given that most all scientists are at least a little intelligent and curious.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

Michael Bush said:


> >I have read in other sources that the drone can fly 10 miles and the queen 13 miles for mating. Seems to be a lot of conflicting info out there.
> 
> I don't think it's contradictory, it's just that reality has a lot of variables. What they CAN do and what the SOMETIMES do and what the USUALLY do are often very different things.
> 
> "Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth." --Blaise Pascal


This is the bit that makes me wonder, what they can do and what they do... it implies that they make decisions based on their desire to live... unless they are retarded through line breeding. If that queen flew thirteen miles, she was either stupid, or had a good reason to do so. Sadly, it is not easy to figure out which.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

"_ If that queen flew thirteen miles, she was either stupid, or had a good reason to do so._"

Or the wind carried her that far, or she is an outlier in a phenomenon with a Gaussian distribution (much like the "fundamental scientist"), or . . .


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

shinbone said:


> "_ If that queen flew thirteen miles, she was either stupid, or had a good reason to do so._"
> 
> Or the wind carried her that far, or she is an outlier in a phenomenon with a Gaussian distribution (much like the "fundamental scientist"), or . . .


.... bee keepers are genetically inclined towards snarkiness...


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

If misunderstanding was profitable, there would be rich people visiting this site.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

Vance G said:


> If misunderstanding was profitable, there would be rich people visiting this site.


Does misunderstanding grow here, or is it imported? It seems that everyone knows they are right and everyone who doesn't agree is misunderstanding, so I'm leaning towards "grows here."


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

It's brought in like a virus.


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## UTvolshype (Nov 26, 2012)

mbc said:


> Drones are welcome in almost any hive during the mating season and can leapfrog vast distances. I expect a proportion of every community has an innate wanderlust and though most drones you see in a hive are probably sons of the queen, some will have come from neighbouring hives and some will have come from afar.


How many trips outside the hive would a queen need to take to map out the countryside to find a drone holding area 4-10 miles away? Sounds a little bit far fetched? I would say that the early drone gets the hook up as quick as the queen is located by a cloud of drones that must surround the home location.


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## Lburou (May 13, 2012)

Michael Bush said:


> >
> 
> 
> Lburou said:
> ...


Thanks for that MB 
We need a like button.


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

The existence of DCA's has been established a long long time. The same ones have persisted In excess of hundred years and that is well documented. I guess it is unfair in some way to consider that a hidden unknown force directs queens and drones to those areas as apparently happens. This does not rule out mating in the congregated numbers of drones and queens over a bee yard. Only a matter of time on this thread before someone will start chanting PROVEN SCIENCE.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

If worker bees can communicate the location of good forage why couldn't they communicate the location of a DCA? If the scout bees are out looking for a new cavity before the swarm leaves, they would surely come across other hives and also DCA's. If the bees are thinking creatures they would not want to be foraging the same area as the parent hive, they would want access to a DCA as well. Given, that all acreage is not equal for a foraging bee... If a colony needs a solid acre of blooms to sustain itself, and it is on a solid acre of blooms, the foraging range would probably be about an acre and the swarm need only move out of the range of the parent hive to avoid having to compete for resources. If I was a bee, I would look at the density of the resources and determine how far away I would have to move. This would be a different distance in different environments... maybe they need open water, and that is a limiting resource. I understand why there would be no pat answer to the question of how far a swarm moves if this was true.


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

UTvolshype said:


> How many trips outside the hive would a queen need to take to map out the countryside to find a drone holding area 4-10 miles away? Sounds a little bit far fetched? I would say that the early drone gets the hook up as quick as the queen is located by a cloud of drones that must surround the home location.


Yes, the queen is generally accepted to be individually linked to her home hive and will fly out from, and return to, her own hive, whereas the drones in any and all hives don't necessarily originate from that hive, they can travel where they please, therefore the drones in a dca aren't necessarily from the immediate area but can come from far and wide.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

mbc said:


> Yes, the queen is generally accepted to be individually linked to her home hive and will fly out from, and return to, her own hive, whereas the drones in any and all hives don't necessarily originate from that hive, they can travel where they please, therefore the drones in a dca aren't necessarily from the immediate area but can come from far and wide.


I noticed some odd looking drones in my hive. The usually ones were fuzzy and light colored, but there were some that were black and more bald. I can only hope they were from a feral hive. Or, the fuzzy ones could have been drones from the package bees and the black ones from the Russian queen I installed. My hive will likely split next spring or early summer and I know I'll be left with a virgin queen. I can only hope that she doesn't get knocked up from some inbred moron drone. It makes sense, from a natural perspective, that the hive would operate as a drone hostel. snicker.....


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Light and fuzzy vs black and more bald could very well be the difference between a newly or recently emerged drone (light and fuzzy) vs an older more mature drone (black and more bald). I myself seem to be getting the balding look as I get older...


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

A colony will have drones in all of the DCAs within flying distance of the colony. Each DCA will have in it the same percentage of drones from each colony within flying distance. A queen will fly only as long as necessary to mate with the desired number of drones. If she reaches the desired number of matings in 10 minutes she returns to the colony, if she doesn't she continues to fly until she does or until she reaches her fuel limits. The average mating flights are from 10 to 30 minutes when sufficient drones are in the area, if the drones are not there the flights are longer. The shorter flights, less than 30 minutes, result in more sperm being stored.

There are reports of the Dark European Bee mating at the apiary, as well as in the DCAs. If there are drones from all colonies in the DCAs it would not be efficient to fly further to mate. I once read a study that said the queen could open the valve fold to receive a drone or she could keep it closed and refuse him. I have searched for the study but I can't find it on the net. Even if the queen mates with related drones it would not result in inbreeding as long as they are a minority of her partners.


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## bevy's honeybees (Apr 21, 2011)

Someone needs to send up a drone with a gopro to dca and post the video.


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## cerezha (Oct 11, 2011)

AR Beekeeper said:


> ... I once read a study that said the queen could open the valve fold to receive a drone or she could keep it closed and refuse him. ...


I saw somewhere on the internet that queen can control which sperm to use to inseminate the egg(s) - in particular, EHB queen prefer to use the sperm from Africanized drones. I do not remember the details, may be she can also choose sexual partners? 

My drones are bald, very dark (black) and large; the girls are 1:1 blonde and brunette.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

She does not have that amount of control Sergey. Once the sperm has entered the spermatheca is gets somewhat homogenized. The thing about AHB sperm is that the AHB genetics seem to be dominant whether one is talking about the genetics found in the sperm or found in the egg. An Africanized drone's sperm is dominant when that drone mates w/ a nonAfricanized queen. And when a nonAfricanized drone mates w/ an Africanized queen the Africanized characteristics shine through.


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## McBee7 (Dec 25, 2013)

Heres an interesting experiment one could use to find a DCA or possibly find a ferel DCA.
http://youtu.be/WgtDhNeg9_Y

==McBee7==


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Is there a difference?


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## McBee7 (Dec 25, 2013)

sqkcrk said:


> Is there a difference?


I see your point, and agree. A DCA is not inside the box and is one of the areas beeks cant control, let alone understand where it is and the dynamics associated with it--ferel so to speak....If indeed this is your point?

==McBee7==


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

If there are managed, aka nonferal, bee hives around where feral, aka unmanaged, bee hives exist what makes a person think they won't both contribute drones to a DCA?


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## McBee7 (Dec 25, 2013)

My notion of a feral DCA is in reference to an idea I have to find DCA's in remote areas. I talked to a logger friend of mine who said they had harvested a tree full of bees in the middle of winter in an area that hasn't seen a beekeeper in at least 15 years...My plan would be to mate queens in this area to the suvivor bees, ie-ferals...

==McBee7==


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>In keeping bees, which I figured were just bugs.... my theory of smart animals did not extend to bugs at the time, I get the feeling that I have taken responsibility for a miniature city full of tiny flying people. They are smart, they plan, they execute plans. I figure that if we, humans, are animals (mammals) and we can think, it can not be said that animals don't think.

"Whether beasts think or not, it is positive that they conduct themselves in thousands of occasions as if they did think; the illusion in this matter, if it be an illusion, was well arranged for us. But without intending to touch upon this great question, and whatever be the cause let us for a moment surrender ourselves to appearances and use every day language."--Jean Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan, 18th century naturalist, from Hubers New Observations on Bees, Volume II, Introduction, page 229 of the 2012 edition.

Here is a remarkable example of them seeing a future outcome of a current direction of work when circumstances change:

"I put these bees under still greater trial: having observed that they try to build their combs, in the shortest way, toward the opposite side of the hive, I covered the latter with a panel of glass, in order to find whether they would be content with a surface which they do not usually trust, unless their cluster can hang in the close vicinity to a substance less slippery than glass. I know that they prefer fastening their combs to wood, and that they accept glass only when they have been deprived of any other substance to strengthen their constructions. I had no doubt however that they would fasten the comb to this pane, taking chances to later strengthen it by securing more stable attachments, but I was far from suspecting what they would do.

"As soon as the board was covered with this smooth slippery surface, they deviated from the straight line which they had hitherto followed, and continued their work by bending their comb at right angle so that the forward edge would reach one of the walls left uncovered.
Varying this experiment in several ways, I saw the bees constantly change the direction of their combs whenever I approximated a surface too smooth to admit of their clustering at the ceiling or on the sides of the hive; They have always selected the direction which would bring them to the wooden sides; I thus compelled them to curve their combs in the strangest shapes by placing a pane at a certain distance in front of their edges.

"These results indicate an admirable instinct; they denote even more than instinct; for glass is not a substance against which bees may be warned by nature; there is nothing as polished as glass or resembling glass in their natural abodes, the interior of trees. The most singular part of their work was that they did not wait until they arrived at the surface of the glass to change the direction of the combs, they selected the suitable spot beforehand; did they anticipate the inconvenience that might result from any other mode of construction? The manner in which they made an angle in the comb was no less interesting; they necessarily had to alter the ordinary fashion of their work and dimensions of the cells; therefore those on the convex side were enlarged to two or three times the diameter of the others on the opposite face. Can we understand how so many insects occupied at once on both sides would concur in giving them the same curvature, from one end to the other; how they could decide to build small cells on one face, while upon the other face they built cells of so exaggerated dimensions; and is it not still more wonderful that they should have the art of making cells of such great discrepancy correspond between them? The bottom of the cells being common to both sides, the tubes alone assumed a taper form. Perhaps no other insect has ever supplied a more decisive proof of the resources of instinct, when compelled to deviate from the ordinary courses."--Huber's New Observations on Bees Volume II, Chapter V, pg 454 of 2012 edition.

If foreseeing a change in outcome because of a change of circumstances is not thinking, then I don't know what thinking is...


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

Nice, Mr. Bush....


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

sqkcrk said:


> If there are managed, aka nonferal, bee hives around where feral, aka unmanaged, bee hives exist what makes a person think they won't both contribute drones to a DCA?


They will. That may be some of the problem with feral populations. If they are getting the phenotype that is adjusted to being managed and are not managed, they die.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

The glass thing is kind of interesting... I designed and built my own hive, and I wanted it to be an observation hive so that I wouldn't have to open it to see what was going on. I say videos of other warre type hives with glass and all of them had the window at the ends of the comb. The bees attached to it, and you really couldn't see what was going on that well, plus, there were cross combing issues. My hive is hexagonal, and rather than running my bars the easy way, between horizontal sides, I ran them point to point. This provides the middle bars with the longest comb, then I put my window facing the side of the comb. They never attached to it. I didn't want my bees attaching to the side walls of the hive at all, because in the winter this attachment would transmit cold right into the center of the hive via the attachment to the wall. Another thing I did to prevent this was using 1" dowels for bars. The rounded bottom of the bars gives the bees a greater surface area for attaching their comb. The slight upward angle of the cells would be easier for them to achieve neatly and it was my hope, with this more secure attachment, that they wouldn't attach to the sidewalls.... and they didn't....


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

This video shows the layout a little better than I can explain it.... If a picture is worth a thousand words, and videos have thousands of pictures....


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

And on another side note, the nectar you see in the top box, two weeks later, that was all gone. I asked here and was told that bees do move honey. I think it proves that they were thinking ahead... ie. that they moved it to the interior of the hive where they could get it easier during the winter.


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## cerezha (Oct 11, 2011)

sqkcrk said:


> ... Once the sperm has entered the spermatheca is gets somewhat homogenized. ...


Hi Mark
It is not exactly what I meant, but still fascinating:
"...She kind of basically just collects ejaculates, she goes back into the colony, and then she sorts these ejaculates out, but only very few, about 5%, of the sperm that she accumulates during her mating flight will ultimately be stored..."
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1424/

I meant this:
"We also found that even when you inseminate a queen with a 50-50 mix of African drone semen and EHB semen, the queens preferentially use the African semen first to produce the next generation of workers and drones, sometimes at a ratio as high as 90 to 10," she says. "We don't know why this happens, but it's probably one of the strongest factors in AHBs replacing EHBs."
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ar/archive/mar04/bees0304.htm


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

AR Beekeeper said:


> A colony will have drones in all of the DCAs within flying distance of the colony. Each DCA will have in it the same percentage of drones from each colony within flying distance.
> This isn't quite right, some colonies are far more successful at producing successful fertile drones than others.
> There are reports of the Dark European Bee mating at the apiary, as well as in the DCAs.


My Amm bees can sometimes be observed mating near the apiary at relatively low heights, it's known as apiary vicinity mating (avm)


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

Interesting about the glass, but bees don't really build comb in vacant space, rather they build comb in areas where bees are clustered, and to imagine those clustering bees aren't somehow aware of where that cluster is continuing to is missing the point of comb building imho


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

mbc said:


> Interesting about the glass, but bees don't really build comb in vacant space, rather they build comb in areas where bees are clustered, and to imagine those clustering bees aren't somehow aware of where that cluster is continuing to is missing the point of comb building imho


I have read that they actually measure the hive and use chaining to determine where the comb will go. One interesting thing I learned about comb building was in regard to the cluster. I watched mine grow, and to me it looked like they made a curtain, and within the curtain they maintained the temperature required to produce wax. It was cold out at night while they were doing this. I usually film them at night, with an IR camera. Before they had enough comb, the glass would fog up when I took the cover off the window. When they had comb, they sealed themselves in it and had a curtain around it. At this point, the windows didn't fog up. I believe it is because they were trapping the heat and moisture inside the cluster. The warm moist air didn't get to the cold glass. But yeah, they made a cluster and then filled the area in it with comb, then they just expanded the cluster... total planning. The things I did in their hive were ideas that I hoped would make their job easier... if they used the advantages... and they did, and in the way I thought. They have to be thinking... all the mental yoga you have to go through to explain this away as programed behavior proves it.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

The studying I did indicated that the bees would plan the longest comb possible across the middle of the area and then make the rest parallel to that. Then they start in a corner and make it so. I saw a video where they snuck into an empty feeding box on a langstroth and they were building their comb from corner to corner. It makes sense to do this if they want to be in the center during the winter... Planning...


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

They also collect and store large quantities of honey, surely this is a clear example of planning ahead.


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## wcnewby (Sep 28, 2014)

mbc said:


> They also collect and store large quantities of honey, surely this is a clear example of planning ahead.


You would think so, but there are those who would say that it is just a behavior, like geese flying south for the winter, or a beaver chewing down a tree and making a dam. Actual scientists... I argued with them on a forum once, then I quit because of how ridiculous it got. It was actually a science vs. religion type forum... Personally, I think these opposed groups could learn from one another.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>How many trips outside the hive would a queen need to take to map out the countryside to find a drone holding area 4-10 miles away? Sounds a little bit far fetched? 

A queen typically spends several days hardening and then several days orienting. That's why it is often two weeks after she emerges before she is mated and laying.


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

Michael Bush said:


> often two weeks after she emerges before she is mated and laying.


It is often a month before they get mated in our conditions with our bees


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

mbc said:


> It is often a month before they get mated in our conditions with our bees


It takes another 2 weeks in the UK? Really? What kind of "catch" percentage do you typically see with matings so delayed?


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

jim lyon said:


> It takes another 2 weeks in the UK? Really? What kind of "catch" percentage do you typically see with matings so delayed?


Not always, sometimes in a period of high pressure they can get it all done and start laying within a week of emerging, but more often than not its 3 weeks + for my virgins to get mated, I live on the west coast of Wales and I wouldnt extrapolate my observations to be similar to the rest of the UK. 
Typically 3/4 virgins will get mated properly and survive natural, then my own, selection.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

We are getting a bit closer now. Perhaps the UK isn't a world of its own after all. . My experience is any delays in mating flights over about a week take a pretty good toll on mating success. I wouldn't have much confidence in any queen that had seen a two week delay.


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

I dont even check my nucs for laying until the third week after emergence and its not often I find sealed brood at this time, I must have confidence in them as otherwise home mated queens would be few and far between. The bees are of different subspecies too, mine being largely Amm, that could make a difference.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>It is often a month before they get mated in our conditions with our bees

It rains a lot less here...


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

Quick mating in my experience is confined to relatively short periods of exceptionally calm weather near mid summer, delayed mating, measured in comparison to what I read from all new world literature on queen mating (I'm not bitterly jealous, honest!) however, does not directly correspond to low pressure, rain, cool temps and high winds. The confounding thing is, to all my spider senses, everything seems fine for the virgins to go out, yet for large parts of our season they steadfastly refuse to go out on mating flights up to the point where, if new world experts are to be believed, the virgins are past it and stale, then they go out and mate, and largely go on to have long and productive lives. Horses for courses I guess.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

deknow said:


> The idea that in the air, a queen recognizes and avoids drones she is related to is claimed over and over, but I've never seen any data supporting the assumption.


I wanted to see such study too.

This was discussed in one another thread and such a study never came up.


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## jonathan (Nov 3, 2009)

My observations coincide with those of MBC. I keep Amm in Ireland and I have observed mating flights taking place in the apiary itself at several different apiaries. Some fly to congregation areas and some mate locally over the apiary.


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

Dr. Loper ' s video shows film of their radar setup and shows both dcas and the fly ways between the hives and the dcas. He comments that the queens tend to fly to the dcas to mate unless they are in an unusual situation (like in an apiary) where they often are mated in the apiary (i have seen this too) or in the flyways.


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## jonathan (Nov 3, 2009)

In a mating Apiary I would have 10-12 colonies and each one would have a couple of drone combs.
Mid summer each colony would have several thousand drones.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

I have not seen matings in the apiary but have seen drones following a ripe queencell in my hand.


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