Several of you have reported seeing matings of the virgin queen while she is still leaving her apiary of origin (AoO). This leaves me with several queries.

In their excellent book "Mating Biology of Honey Bees", Koeniger and Koeniger do not I think address this phenomenon. However, they do report via inventive capture and counting methods (it is worth reading the book just to admire their clever methods of documenting mating biology) that drones overwhelmingly choose to fly to Drone Congregation Areas (DCA's) that are closer to their apiary of origin, and that queens overwhelmingly choose to fly to further DCA's: drones and queens from any given AoO prefer to fly to different DCA's.

Part of the act of mating is the queen opening her sting chamber to accept the drone. Possibly matings in the AoO are dockings with a queen whose sting chamber is closed? They do not discuss if the opening of the sting chamber is voluntary or involuntary. Has any work been done on that question?

Koeniger and Koeniger also discuss what conditions underpin choice of the DCA, and in their research they discount all conditions except what they term "depletion of the horizon"...ie. where a height of land falls off and meets the horizon. In the case of flat landscapes, drones diffuse over a very wide area close to their colonies and converge on a virgin queen and in particular her pheromones (which are more widely disseminated when the queen alters her flight style from straight and fast to a zig-zaggy style, creating air turbulence that disperses the pheromones in a more local cloud...after that the drones use their eyes to find HRH, and I have also read that as a successful drone falls away from the queen, a pop of ultraviolet light cues other drones as to where the queen is). 

Is is possible that these in-yard matings are in beeyards in flat landscapes poor in elevation cues?

The Koenigers also mention virgin queen orientation flights but make no mention of the queens being mobbed by drones on those flights.

Perhaps someone has the Koeniger's contact info still? It would be interesting to hear their thoughts on AoO matings. 

A most interesting subject!

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