Apiary Vicinity mating again

[prakel]

The thing with the DCAs (in my limited experience of one!) is that you can clearly see the drone activity, not just the comet but the Catherine wheel type swirls too. So although the mating may not be clear to the naked eye there is a well researched body of evidence which tells us those drones are chasing queens rather than practicing for an aerobatic display. This is what I find fascinating with the AVM behaviour, the apparent lack of well defined drone activity. This suggests that both queens and drones have different behaviour patterns to the norm as it's understood at this time.

Out of interest, have you ever tried to keep a lineage record of the queens involved to try and ascertain whether it happens within certain families more than others?

It's interesting to hear what Manley has to say about mating flights and swarms.

In the interest of maintaining an open mind. He also wrote:

First there is the incidence of Herrod-Hempsall in his two volume book. In this case he not only saw the drone and virgin come together in flight, but spotted where they fell and succedded in killing them with cyanide and taking a photograph of them while in actual sexual connection. This must be almost unique though I dare say that if large commercialbreeders could spare the time to watch long enough, many similar instances would transpire. The other case was related to me in a letter two or three years ago in the following words "...........We saw the virgin pursued by a considerable number of drones, and the race continued swiftly in long zig-zags, a number of drones being 'tailed off' at each sharp turn at a height of about forty feet. These zigzags continued for a considerable time. the height being evenly maintained and the distance from us not appreciably increasing.Suddenly something fell, fairly slowly, from the crowd, and, my father keeping watch on the hive, I ran to the spot to search. Unfortunately I misjudged the distance and went too far, for after a vain search I saw the a queen rising apparently from the path in front of me. I at once looked for the drone and sure enough, found one on the grass verge, just as my father announced the return of the queen to the hive......

R.O.B Manley 'Honey Farming' 1946

[Jon]

Out of interest, have you ever tried to keep a lineage record of the queens involved to try and ascertain whether it happens within certain families more than others?

It happens with all the stock I have but I usually only take grafts from 2 or 3 queens in a season.
The apideas are charged from any available colony at the start of the season.
The behaviour seems to be worker driven but I guess that could be controlled by queen pheromone so it's a chicken and egg situation.

I am refraining from making any claim that this is exclusively a black bee thing but it is interesting that another black bee guy MBC has seen similar stuff.

[prakel]

Two current threads on beesource which may touch on AVM.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/show...th-mated-Queen

bobanloubee wrote: We searched the internet and couldn't find much info about our experience. We found discussions in the UK about so-called "Apiary Vicinity Mating" (AVM) which fits the behavior of our mini swarm to a T, but the theory of what's happening is controversial. Have others observed this behavior?

http://www.beesource.com/forums/show...edure-Theories

Verbify wrote: It was getting dark so we put it in a Nic. Next morning we looked and it mysteriously had no queen. Ended up combining it into one of our hives.

[Jon]

Thanks for the links. That sounds very similar to what I have seen and appears to be a mating swarm with a supersedure queen - a carniolan strain in this case.
As I mentioned above, I saw this once with a supersedure but the other cases involve virgins mating from nucs or apideas.

[Adam]

The only mating swarm I believe I saw was from a full-sized hive - they flew and then came back the queen was laying shortly afterwards. Can't remember the type of queen - my current ones tend to be quite orangy in colour - although there's quite a variability.

Mini-nucs do abscond AFTER the queen has started to lay - often just a few days and before you get around to putting a queen excluder over the entrance. It does seem to be a heat thing and the mini-nucs don't have to be in full sun either - just a decent warm day. I've never seen it from 3 or 5 frame nucs using std BS frames but have seen it from some small plywood mini-nucs I have.

[Jon]

Hi Adam. yes, I am well familiar with absconding from Apideas and it happens sometimes just a couple of days after she starts to lay. Mostly it is caused by over population or over heating but sometimes it just happens! If you set things up right it does not appear to happen in more than one in 20 or 30 apideas. On a really hot day the bets are off!

What I am describing always happens before the queen has started to lay and usually precedes laying by 2 or 3 days.