>> It is my understanding that drones in the yard where the virgins are 
>> located will NOT be the drones to mate with her.

Trevor covered this well, but I will add my 2c worth too.

That seems to be widely believed and may be true in areas with a lot of 
bees, but in an isolated mating area, it obviously is not.

There is also evidence from Europe that there is not the expected amount of 
interbreeding between adjacent yards which happen to hold bees which are not 
closely related.

I had a personal experience where we set up a nuc yard with several hundred 
mating nucs and the drone hives right next to our home.  We often observed 
the queens mating directly above the yard and the drones chasing anything 
that flew, including the swallows  (they found that most annoying). 

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