As in other insects, males of most Apis species
do not transfer their sperm directly to the spermatheca,
but ejaculate them into the female’s
sexual tract, the bursa copulatrix

Since the total volume of all ejaculates is much
larger than the volume of the bursa copulatrix,
ejaculates get transferred to the lateral oviducts
by contractions of the bursa

The actual sperm storage process lasts for about
40 hours after mating (Woyke, 1983), during
which most of the previously acquired sperm
gets lost as it flows back into the bursa copulatrix
to be eventually expelled through the vagina

In Apis mellifera, the lateral oviducts of
a queen contain about 200 million sperm after
a mating flight (see references in Winston,
1991). However, only about 4.7 million of
these get stored in the spermatheca, which
means that only around 2.5% of the sperm
acquired during the nuptial flight(s) gets stored.

Extreme sperm dumping is not only known
from A. mellifera but also for A. dorsata
(Oldroyd et al., 1996) and must also occur in
A. koschnevnikovi and A. cerana, because also
in these species females acquire much more
sperm than is required to fill the spermatheca

This enormous loss of sperm during the sperm storage
process has puzzled researchers ...

the "genotype scrambling" hypothesis
can in fact explain the excessive sperm
intake and sperm dumping of Apis queens. One
important reason for genotype collecting is that
the queen has insufficient information about
her mates and insufficient time to discriminate
among them

Boris, B. A. E. R. (2005). Sexual selection in Apis bees. Apidologie, 36, 187-200.

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