"with queens mating on average 2 to 3 kilometres from their nests"

I have seen such claims many times on how far away queens go to mate.  Some much farther than this quote.  Yet experiments timing how long a queen is gone on her mating flights give values of 10 to at most 20 minutes or in one case 30 minutes.  So, lets assume zero wind and she flies at a ground speed of 15 mph.  We also have to account for some time spent mating and we need to account for flights not being in a straight line from the hive to the DCA.  So, give her five minutes to mate with several drones and the time spent flying drops to 5 to 25 minutes.  At 15 mph she can fly only 1.25 miles total distance in 5 minutes.  That means the DCA area had to be closer than 1 km from the hive.  For 25 minutes she can fly a total distance of  6.25 miles total distance.  If 1/3 of that distance is wandering trying to find a DCA the DCA is only 2.1 miles from the home hive or 3.5 km.  Where I live my queens never have the luxury of flying in zero wind.  Mid afternoon wind speeds when queens fly are generally in the 5 to 10 mph range.  Add in the effect of wind and she is not able to fly as far as she can in still air making those DCAs even closer.  Or if we believe the authors who report max time on mating flights of 20 minutes the distances also drop.

It seems to me to make more sense for drones to fly far and queens mating close to home from an evolutionary standpoint.  Queens are a rare and important resource and the mating flights should have adapted to allow her to adequately mate while exposing herself to the minimum risk.  The minimum risk would be short flights.  On the other hand drones are a dime a dozen and if one gets eaten by a bird or gets lost the species suffers zero loss.  I doubt very much if my queens fly more than a few hundred yards with all the drones in my apiary.  If they wanted to fly farther they would need to fly several miles over forest to be back in bee territory with lots of drones.  Over the forest the wind speeds are even higher as wind speeds typically go up rather dramatically with altitude.  Plus, we have all heard stories by people who raise a lot of queens that have observed matings right over the apiary.

Dick

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