My drone colonies are in the same yard with my mating nucs.  A queens mating flight is only 10 to 30 minutes long.  She can not fly very far away and be back that fast and still have time to find the drone congregation area and mate with several drones.  I am aware of a DNA study done in the UK that showed queens mating with drones produced in colonies up to some 12 miles away.  That must be due to drone drift as a queen simply does not use the time needed to fly that far.  A mating flight that long would have her gone for two or three hours.  From an evolutionary stand point it makes more sense for drones to drift far distances than it makes for queens to fly long distances.  After all, queens are valuable and very limited in number so need to reduce the risk of not coming home from mating flights.  Drones on the other hand are a dime a dozen and if 90% of them perish when flying looking for a queen to mate with it is no big deal.

Dick

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html