Apiary Vicinity mating again

[Jon]

I saw a perfect example of this today in my back garden where I have about 40 Apideas, most of them with virgins at the moment.
About 4.30 I noticed the mating swarm in the air and it settled in a Rowan tree in my next door neighbour's garden just over the fence.
This is part of the process of AVM, the bees circle in the air with a load of drones present then settle around the queen the same way they do with a swarm.
I have not worked out what role this plays in the process but I have seen it dozens of times now.
I checked through the apideas and found the one which was depleted and queenless and kept an eye on it.
About 6pm the cluster broke and the bees rose in the air and moved to the entrance of the Apidea and started fanning.
I watched it carefully from about 6 feet away and saw the queen land on the front and go in.

There was speculation in earlier discussions as to whether this behaviour was mating or absconding so I think that is settled as bees do not abscond only to change their mind a couple of hours later.
The other thing is that the bees return before the queen, who is almost the last bee to return, so this behaviour must be driven by the workers rather than the queen.
That queen will be laying in 2-3 days when I check.

Hopefully she mated ok as she emerged on 14th July so must be near her sell by date.