Queen pheremones and DCAs

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks Fatshark. It seems obvious now - of course she'll know the clues on how to get there, and isn't as mystified about finding DCA locations as we are.
Kitta

[Jon]

Is there research to back up where queens fly to?
Those RFID markers used in some of the pesticide studies would be a good way to track virgin queens.
There must be some studies which have tracked queens to DCAs but I am not aware of any.
I remember Robert Paxton commenting that extraneous DNA turned up at one of the Baltic island mating stations so either queens were flying onshore or drones were doing the reverse. The island was 2 miles off shore

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Kitta
http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to...ms/carrot-fly/
carrot fly sniff out carrots a mile away and they are rubbish flyers

[gavin]

Is there research to back up where queens fly to?
Those RFID markers used in some of the pesticide studies would be a good way to track virgin queens.
There must be some studies which have tracked queens to DCAs but I am not aware of any.
I remember Robert Paxton commenting that extraneous DNA turned up at one of the Baltic island mating stations so either queens were flying onshore or drones were doing the reverse. The island was 2 miles off shore

I wrote to Gudrun Koeniger on this last year and she said that queens preferentially flew (in an experiment in the Alps) downhill, to a dip in the horizon, just as drones did. That isn't from direct observation but inference from mated queens.

In their excellent book on mating biology they describe work with Cordovan bees which shows that queens were tending to fly further than drones to mate. Cordovan is a recessive trait so virgin and drone have to carry it to make Cordovan workers. They also said that the variability of flight distance was greater for queens.

I asked her the question on whether queens and drone may fly upwind in a breeze, as I believe workers tend to do when aiming for distant forage. She thought not.

[fatshark]

RFID wouldn't do it Jon ... too short range if I remember correctly. That's the technology they use to mark and count workers going to/from the hive entrance.
Harmonic radar is the geekery to track over long distances, though I seem to remember it still has range less than the mating flights of queens ... and needs an unobstructed and flat area to work well.

Here it's used for bumble bees and the original honey bee paper (which wasn't a paper, but a short letter to the editor of Nature) is be partially (?) viewed here .

[Jon]

Hadn't realised that RFID was only really used for counting out and counting in at the hive entrance.
This paper by Schneider et al was the one I was thinking of.

[Greengage]

Glad you started this thread i have noted 14 Apiaries on my google map and drew a circle 3 miles radius from the hives but i think the distance is too great for them to make it back so have shortened it to 1.5 miles and looked to where they overlap, maybe iam way off but will be interested to see where this thread goes, Ill read the articles later.