"I don't know what the max distances for queen travel are."

The above sentence refers to distance queens travel during mating.  There have been a number of studies on how long a queen's mating flight takes time wise.  Mating flights last from five minutes to a max of 35 minutes. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41712520_Mating_flight_duration_of_Apis_mellifera_queens_As_short_as_possible_as_long_as_necessary)  Consider how far a queen can fly in 35 minutes, spend some time mating and return home.  A queen flies about 15 mph (25 kph)  She has to fly out and fly back home.  Assume actual mating takes five minutes she has 30 minutes flying time.  She is not going to fly a straight line as she is searching for a DCA.  So straight line distance might easy be no more than half the total distance she flies.  She has enough time to fly a total of 7.5 miles.  Cut in half for the round trip and in half once more because she does not fly a straight line and you get her mating area is no more than a bit under two miles from home.  That neglects any impact wind would have which would reduce that distance to the mating area even more.

I think it is very safe to say that queens do not fly very far at all to find a mate.  Most matings likely take place within a small fraction of a mile of the hive as few mating flights are at the upper end time wise.  Those at the upper end may be long time wise simply because the queen stopped at some point for a rest, or got somewhat lost and flew a lot of circles finding her way.  To support the idea that queens do not fly far to mate several people have reported seeing and even photographing queens mating right in the yard within feet of the hive.  It also makes evolutionary sense that queens should not fly very far at all to mate.  A hive has one queen and she needs to get mated and return to the hive.  She needs to make two or occasionally three mating flights to get inseminated by the 30+ drones that Deleplane's latest research shows she mates to.  Such flights are risky and the longer and farther she flies the riskier they get.  Loss of that queen kills the hive.  On the other hand drones are a dime a hundred and if half of them get lost or eaten by a bird it is no big deal.  Evolution would logically select for queens that flew the minimum distance required for adequate mating while drones fly far distances to reduce inbreeding.

Dick

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