Why AMM?

[Jon]

Can you remember the weather conditions

It's all anecdotal I think but the argument goes that native bees are more likely to grab a chance to mate when the weather is poor and that would favour mating close to home.

I have read that argument as well but in this case the weather has been perfect each time, blue skies, totally calm and temperature over 20c. It could just be that I have a drone congregation area over my apiary.
A lot of what you read is complete tosh. Queens are supposed to mate flying high chased by the fastest drone but the events I saw were about 10 feet off the ground with all the bees swirling around. The cluster I collected at the weekend and tipped into an apidea had eggs within 48 hours.

[gavin]

Any observations on the time of day of flights? There is a figure in a book I was reading (Rinderer's book on bee genetics and breeding) showing that the three Asian species (A. florea, cerana and dorsata) have drone flights at different times of day. I wonder if the A. mellifera races might do things differently time-wise too, as something seems to help keep the genetics as stiff porridge rather than watery dyes. AVM might be part of it, but is there more? I know that you are about to tell me that the drones and the queens just fly when they have the right temperature.

[Jon]

Any observations on the time of day of flights?

Queens never fly early, ie before about 12.30, even if the temperature is in the 20s, and I have never seen any fly much later than 5.00 pm.

I have seen 6-8 of these mating swarms over my apiary yet I have 60+ queens mated so for all I know many of them are flying miles away to drone congregation areas.
Strange as it may seem, I do not spend every afternoon at the apiary so it does seem to me that seeing 6-8 of these mating swarms is quite a lot if it is not a habitual event.

[gavin]

You don't?!

OK, there is hard data in Mortiz' chapter. It came from Koeniger and Wijayagunasekera (1976).

Drone flights per 15 min, expressed as a % of the total:

A. florea - 12:00 - 14:30 local time (when they did the experiment of course)
A. cerana - 16:15 - 17:45
A. dorsata - 17:30 - 18:45

Almost zero overlap, no doubt driven by selection as cross-species matings will be sterile so the bees could do without that. Cross-honeybee race matings might also be unfit in the long run (avert your eyes DL!) so might they do this too?

Where is Dave Cushman when you need him. He would have known.

[Jon]

I see my drones flying earlier and flying later than queens would be flying with peak activity in mid afternoon.
Some colonies have hundreds of drones at the entrance.

I wonder are drones drawn to a virgin queen when she leaves the colony or is the virgin drawn to the drones when they are out in numbers.

An apidea which has a virgin in it often has drones inside and hanging around the entrance whereas an apidea with a mated queen is generally ignored by the drones.

And how much of the process is controlled by the mating swarm of workers which accompanies the virgin.

[The Drone Ranger]

Funny enough Breeding Better Bees covers this so presumably Ruttner must have done some work on it.
Page 16 and 17

There is some drone wing measurements in there as well

[The Drone Ranger]

Jon

What % of grafts taken do you estimate end up with a fully functioning queen
The reason I ask is that an article in Beecraft pointed out that Rothampstead between 1961 and1993 achieved as high as 78% and as low as 20%
The latter 10years it was between 39% and 20%
If you are substantially higher you might be in a very advantageous site regards matings.
Or it also might be the strain of bee of course (or a good year)

[Jimbo]

Hi DR,

That's a bit low. Last year I had 70% success from larvae to full queens cell with 50% overall success from larvae to mated queen. This year it was again 70% success from larvae to full queen cells with 60% fully mated queen so up slightly this year on mating success. This may be due to a few more colonies being in the isolated mating site than last year or the weather being a bit more settled for mating

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi DR,

That's a bit low. Last year I had 70% success from larvae to full queens cell with 50% overall success from larvae to mated queen. This year it was again 70% success from larvae to full queen cells with 60% fully mated queen so up slightly this year on mating success. This may be due to a few more colonies being in the isolated mating site than last year or the weather being a bit more settled for mating

I was quite surprised myself.
I suppose there is a lot of adverse weather and stuff in those stats.

Swarming danger is pretty much over for me now.
When would you call it a day on the grafting for this year.?
I figured you need about 1 month to hatch and mate plus another couple of weeks in the apidea ?

[Jon]

I am still grafting. I did 22 on Wednesday and got 19 started.
4 days earlier I grafted 22 into a different colony and they started two.
Getting the colony right to accept grafts is the key factor rather than the dexterity of the grafter.

I hope to continue for a few weeks yet.

I would say that this year once I have a virgin queen in an apidea I am getting about 75% mated. I think a lot of the losses are mating swarms gone wrong where the queen lands short and the bees from the apidea settle around her. I have rescued several of these clusters so far this year.

With the grafting, you can get a few cells torn down at any stage especially if the weather takes a turn for the worse.

Some losses are due to human error. If cells go in to apideas too early they often get chilled and don't hatch. 1 day before hatching is ideal but 3 days is too long.

Some batches are really good. I put 10 cells in to apideas last Sunday and when I checked the following evening every one had hatched. These ones should fly and mate this week if we get a sunny blink.