Peter Borst wrote:


By leaving his mating sign in
he queen after mating he does not prevent other
rones from mating but in contrast seems to facilitate
urther matings. Besides its function as an
ptical marker ........




Although a drone has many more ommatidia than a worker I don't think that they enable him to focus particularly sharply.  Compound eyes are better for distinguishing patterns and especially movement and so would be very good for spotting the queen in flight.  I think it more likely that the mating sign would rapidly come to the drones' attention via their scent detecting apparatus in their antennae. Remember that they have an extra segment on each antenna compared to workers and I suspect that this enables them a) to seek out and find other colonies to which they can drift, thus potentially spreading their mother's genes a little further; b) tracking down queens on mating flights; and c) joining/ jumping the queue once another drone has got to the queen first.
 
This is just theory though and I'm trying to think of a practical way in which it can be tested (unless it already has!). DARG (the Devon Apicultural Research Group) is planning to play with drones as its project for next year and so if anybody has any suggestions for amateur research along these lines, please let me know.
 
Chris




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