Now, for something completely different, how to catch Apis cerana drones (should you wish to) ...

> Apis mellifera males readily enter mesh traps containing queen pheromone lures that are suspended from helium balloons (Williams, 1987). However, we found that A. cerana males will not approach such traps. Instead, we tied 3–4 lures (blackened cigarette filters impregnated with 2–3 queen equivalents of synthetic queen mandibular pheromone 9-oxodecanoic acid; Intko Supply Ltd, Canada) onto short lengths of stiff nylon line, such that they stuck out horizontally 10–15 cm from a mainline tethering the balloon to the ground. 

> We then coated the lines with fly-paper glue and swung the balloon gently when drones approached the lures, so that their wings or legs became stuck to the line and they could be reeled in.  In this way, we sampled 14 congregation sites within the invasive range during the same months as our colony collections (mean no. males per congregation = 200 ± 126, range 54–458). 

> We conclude that by rescuing sex locus diversity that would otherwise be lost, workers’ sons help honey bee populations to minimize the negative effects of inbreeding after founder events and so contribute to their success as invaders.

-- Gloag, Rosalyn S., et al. "Workers’ sons rescue genetic diversity at the sex locus in an invasive honey bee population." Molecular ecology (2019).

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