witnessed a mating swarm

[Jon]

I witnessed a mating swarm from an Apidea today.

I nipped up at lunchtime to take a queen out of the Apidea of one of our group members as he needed it to re-queen a colony tonight.

At about ten past one the bees started piling out of one of my Apideas which had a queen hatched 11 days ago, from the cell I brought home in the puncture repair kit Thursday week ago.

I saw the queen leave after most of the bees were out and she defecated in the air as she took off.

The bees milled around the allotment about 30 feet away for ten minutes or so, no more than 10-15 up feet in the air. I walked down into the middle of the swarm and the first thing I noticed was that it was packed full of circling drones and these did not come out of the Apidea. There were far too many bees.

The cloud of bees then drifted back towards the Apidea and bees started fanning at the entrance. I watched carefully for 5 minutes but did not see the queen arrive back so I am guessing she was one of the first back in. Possible I just missed her though. I put an excluder strip on. It was about 20c and sunny, perfect mating weather.

So either this is apiary vicinity mating or I have a drone congregation area above my apiary. I have seen this cloud of bees in the air over the allotment several times but this was the first time I saw the bees leave an Apidea en masse. I had expected them to disappear and reappear later.

Either way, I like it, as my drones are bound to predominate in the mix.

video here