> Any observations to support this wild surmise?

In Gormanston, one of the presentations was a Drone Congregation Area
demonstration led by Karl Showler.  This was a very memorably part of the
conference in Ireland, hiking around the golf course at the monestary with
the beautiful green hills in the background!  Karl had a bamboo fishing rod
with a lure impregnated with queen pheremones which he used to try to locate
the DCAs.  Thinking back, I believe Karl really was putting us on, taking us
for a hike, as DCAs tend to be in the same place, even year after year.  I
suspect he knew where the DCAs were located and merely took us on a
liesurely walk to eventually bring us to where he knew the drones would be
found.  Perhaps not.  Regardless I will forever be thankful to him for the
afternoon and will always cherish the experience!

But I digress.  Robin wonders, "how virgin queens find drone asemblies so
quickly."  Based on my experience at Gormanston, I am sure the queens don't
find the drones, the drones mob the queen!  I base this belief on
observations on Gormanston's golf course.  We had located a DCA, actually
off the golf course, we were on the football fileds (soccer fiels to us
Yanks).  Anyway, we were teasing the drones with the lure, throwing stones
up to watch the drones dive-bomb the moving stone, we were having a grand
old time.  Then all of a sudden the entire group of drones abandoned our
games in an instane and flew off in formation towards what had to be a
virgin queen on her mating flight.  We observed the black mass of drones fly
off and congregate about a quarter to a half mile away, between the soccer
filed and the castle and more or less hoover there where we assumed the
virgin queen was flying.

Now, are we SURE there was a virgin queen flying at that place and time? No,
it was too far away and probably impossible to verify our speculation that
it had to be the REAL THING that enticed our drones away from the false
lure.  More anecdotal evidence for our theory was found a day or two later
when we were examining hives and found recently hatched queen cells.  So, I
was there and witnessed it.  And now you've read it on BEE-L so it must be
gospel that queens don't find drones, drones find queens!

Aaron Morris - longing to go back to Gormanston!

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