Quote Originally Posted by The Drone Ranger View Post

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.