Hi All

Waldemar asks...

 > How does the queen select the drones she mates with?

I can't give you accurate answers, but I can point to some of the ideas...

If you watch the drones forming a comet downwind of a pheromone lure, 
they bob about, but remain in an orderly queue. The pecking order that 
this implies obviously has a bearing on which drones have a higher 
probability of mating, but we need to know what causes this pecking order.

When drones are pursuing a queen in AVM the bobbing about is less than 
with the lure, but this may be a factor of the speed of flight 'cos it 
happens very quickly indeed 'for real' rather than using a lure.

There is some suggestion from past work using queens tethered by a silk 
thread that a queen can extend her sting and burst a drone that is 
getting pumped up ready for action, this stems from work done in 
Lincolnshire in the late 1960s and early 70s (I think by Bernard Mobus).

I was not present at any of those trials, but I remember them being 
widely and avidly discussed at the time.

Another factor that could have a bearing, would be the approach and grip 
adopted by the drone, if the queen objected to such a grip or it was 
inapropriate from a racial morphometric 'fit' point of view, then she 
may be able to avoid the encounter.

Maybe the scent drifting backwards from a flying queen has some effect 
in ordering the queue of drones.

All of this is conjecture, what is really required is more structured 
experimental work on the possibilities. Universities are likely to say 
"give us the money and we'll do the work" as there is no financial spin 
off from it and it is not interesting enough for them to spend their own 
money :-)


Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
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