Has a marker been identified for avm ?

[SDM]

For sure queens can draw a crowd when coming and going, but reports of "drone " comets are specific enough that I'm happy they are drones.
Jon's observations pretty much shoot down the theory that it's a behaviour for sub optimal conditions..I'm not so sure that he's right about population density being unnatural. Imagine an ancient oak forest where trees may have multiple suitable cavities and given bees gravitate to other bees when swarming. I imagine many colonies could end up in a few acres.
Bees will go to great lengths to try to ensure their genes survive in some form. eg. queen less hives not ejecting drones presumably in the hope of them mating. So I reckon they'd accept an occasional bit of insert if it meant their survival.
I doubt it's to do with mating hive size as reports certainly predate apideas .
As the only other "race" that has displayed it so far( that I know of)
is Buckfast which is largely Amm in its origin, I'm left thinking it must be a genetic( perhaps epigenetic) trait..
One of the things I love about beekeeping is that for all we know about bees, a relative novice can still come up with a question that doesn't seem to have an answer yet.
Thanks to everyone for the input.

[Jon]

I saw this once with a supersedure queen taking a mating flight from a full colony so it's not just a phenomenon associated with mini nucs such as apideas.
It's not absconding either as the bees return to their Apidea after this behaviour.
I have checked this loads of times when I have seen the mating swarm and queen return to the Apidea and you find eggs 2 or 3 days later - which suggests that even if what is seen is not the actual event where mating takes place it seems to have something to do with the process in terms of the timing of the event.

I saw a mating swarm this afternoon when I was caging queens for posting tomorrow.
They are quite common especially if you have 50+ Apideas on a site.
If you get a sunny afternoon such as this afternoon queens will be out mating.

[The Drone Ranger]

The large number of young queens all in one location at one time might be a driver
Thats unlikely to occur in nature
On the other hand some authors listing AMM traits including Vicinity Mating have done so despite themselves having very few hives
The big queen rearers of yesteryear Pellet Sladen Root Snelgrove etc don't seem to mention it as far as I know

If it wasn't for Jon I might be sceptical

UFO's have a better historical track record it appears http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/cas...ion=sortoldest
starting way back in 329 BC , when Beowulf --- sorry, Alexander the Great spotted one
That blew my argument right out of the water regarding people misinterpreting what they see as a UFO
Why did Patrick Moore not see more of them though, nobody has explained that little mystery

[prakel]

The large number of young queens all in one location at one time might be a driver Thats unlikely to occur in nature

This is something, the likely opportunistic nature rather than an inherent trait that I've speculated on several times, but I think that it's probably been dismissed as the mad ramblings of that southerner...

On the other hand some authors listing AMM traits including Vicinity Mating have done so despite themselves having very few hives
The big queen rearers of yesteryear Pellet Sladen Root Snelgrove etc don't seem to mention it as far as I know

While there's no doubt that some of the current world authorities on bee mating behaviour are extremely sceptical about avm there are plenty of historical references. A few examples:

She may take one or more orientation flights to mark the location of her hive within three to five days after she has emerged from her cell and mating sometimes occurs on these flights.

Queen Rearing by Laidlaw & Eckert 1950

Jay Smith who, despite having some questionable ideas, appears to have ran a successful, large scale queen rearing business wrote that:

Upon one occasion when the queen and a horde of drones were in the air they made such a buzzing that Mrs. Smith asked if that was a swarm. It sounded like one.

Better Queens by Jay Smith 1948

...the unstated implication being that this must have been close by/in the mating yard.

The first flights of a queen from the hive are very short, and, like young workers, she flies in circles near the entrance, as if fixing the location. Several such flights may be taken before she really takes a long one. Finally, however, she leaves the entrance and flies in ever increasing circles upward, and, if there are drones in the apiary or near by, she is usually mated. The height to which she flies and the distance from the hive at which she meets the drone depend entirely on circumstances; it may be near at hand or even a couple of miles away. This is a matter very difficult of observation, naturally, but the mating has often been observed by chance. It is a very simple matter to see the first circles of the virgin on leaving the hive entrance, and if drones are plentiful it is not hard to see that many of them start after her.

The Rearing of Queen Bees by E.F. Phillips 1905

and finally, a tantalising paragraph which suggests that the writer was aware of localised mating (for reference: he was clearly an 'Amm man'):

The bee's peculiar method of mating we believe to be due to a necessity to prevent the reproductive castes of the same hive continuously mating; but the mating of queens with drones of the same strain and race is compatible with the production of sound stock, and further, is not only the true method, but the one endorsed by nature.

The belief in the necessity of the queen being crossed when mating, has undoubtedly led to extremes in that matter. At the present time, especially in this country, no breeding is considered right that does not include a considerable amount of out-crossing.

Practical Bee-Breeding by A. Gilman 1928

[prakel]

The big queen rearers of yesteryear Pellet Sladen Root Snelgrove etc don't seem to mention it as far as I know

I don't think that this one is quite as ambiguous as it first appears...

A large apiary kept for honey production possesses all the best conditions for the successful rearing of queens and frequently also for obtaining a high percentage of matings with drones of selected parentage for the improvement of stock.

Bees and How to Keep Them by F.W.L. Sladen 1916

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi prakel
That's a well researched post you must have a fair collection of bee books
SDM original question was about genetic markers for AVM
I don't think they will exist
Identical twins start with exactly the same DNA and yet due to external factors they diverge
So I suspect that The Dorset Hypothesis put forward by yourself may well be correct
Epigenetics ?

I note however that you have dodged the UFO / Patrick Moore dilemma
Is it a government cover-up ?


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[prakel]

I note however that you have dodged the UFO / Patrick Moore dilemma
Is it a government cover-up ?

It's simply too clever a conundrum for me to tackle so I took the easy option and had a go at the avm thing

[gavin]

In the plant world, towards the N and W fringes there is an increasing frequency of inbreeding and outright avoidance of sex at all (viviparous plants, I'm thinking). Sex is risky in a cool, wet and windy environment. (Don't fancy it as much myself in those conditions, outside anyway). Where honeybees become sparse and the weather variable I can see there would be selection pressure for their reproduction to be more local - and the underlying genetics would adapt to that. AVM (just like supersedure as an optional alternative to swarming as a strategy) still seems an open question to me, not as something that happens to every colony all the time but is there in the mix to ensure survival in poorer conditions.

[The Drone Ranger]

We have mild climate compared to say Russia so you might expect Caucasian bees to do the same ?

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[prakel]

I have watched this AVM thing occur many times now with my own mating boxes, I am still not convinced that it is an actual mating event, in most cases the bees are flying low with none if any drones present in the gathering (there are no drones in my mating boxes). More likely a form of absconding behaviour.

I've now seen, on a couple of seperate occassions, something similar to this. Low flying, circling around the apiary in an eerily quiet manner which is something that also fits in with what Jon has previously described.

I'm also inclined to think that it may be a prelude to an absconding event, both times the 'swarm' has initially settled close by (and been caught). My thoughts are that the circling may be an attempt to recruit 'extras' from other colonies before heading off. Bit far fetched perhaps but one thing for certain is that the low, silent, circling is nothing like the behaviour which I've observed firsthand at a DCA it's also different to the 'comets' which Ged Marshall mentioned to Gavin.

By the way, this phenomenon has only been noticed here when we've been playing around with small mating nucs.