# General beekeeping > Queen raising >  Apiary vicinity mating

## Jon

An interesting discussion on AVM split off from 'Today's News'.




> I think it comes across very plausibly when he's talking, perhaps less so in writing.
> My point about strains of bee was that the bulk of what is written and the research is done on bees which are unfamiliar to me and which have been transplanted into different areas, it must colour the conclusions somewhat.


Possibly. I see a lot of Apiary vicinity mating and there are plenty of people who don't accept that it happens. In Tom Seeley's videos the bees look like Ligustica.

----------


## prakel

> Possibly. I see a lot of Apiary vicinity mating and there are plenty of people who don't accept that it happens.


Do you think that AVM is definitely a trait which can be ascribed to certain strains/races of honey bee or might it be as much (or more) an opportunistic result of larger apiaries rather than, as Cooper implied, something special?

----------


## busybeephilip

I have seen this AVM thing too.  sometimes ends up with the queen surrounded in a small cluster of bees in the grass or nearby branch.  I have only seen this where queens have flown from apideas never from a full hive, presumably if it were from a full hive ie 5 frame nuc,  then it would look like a normal swarm, the only swarms ive observed returning to a box is where the Q has been clipped.

So why is this mainly observed from apideas ?  I still think that there is an element of absconding happening here, I've not observed masses of drones chasing a queen in the vicinity of the apairy site where AVM is taking place so this makes me wonder what is really happening

----------


## Jon

> Do you think that AVM is definitely a trait which can be ascribed to certain strains/races of honey bee or might it be as much (or more) an opportunistic result of larger apiaries rather than, as Cooper implied, something special?


Pete L says that he sees it too with his Buckfast. I am skeptical of a lot of the Beo Cooper writing. He wrote to an agenda the same way as Brother Adam. Two sides of the same coin.

----------


## prakel

> Pete L says that he sees it too with his Buckfast. I am skeptical of a lot of the Beo Cooper writing. He wrote to an agenda the same way as Brother Adam. Two sides of the same coin.


So, assuming you're right and Cooper was wrong on this it's looking like it may well be nothing more than the result of concentrating lots of colonies and/or virgins in a small area. 




> I am well aware that this statement may be disputed, for it has long been an accepted theory that virgin queens mate with drones high up in the air and at considerable distances from their hives. I do not now think this is really the case, at all events in breeding apiaries where there are large numbers of drones ready to give chase to every virgin when she flies. I think that in such situations the young queens are normally mated within quite a short distance of the hives and usually at no great height. 
> 
> *'Honey Farming' by R.O.B Manley*


Then of course there's busybeephillip's hypothesis that there's an absconding component to AVM. Anyone have any further thoughts/observations on this?

----------


## mbc

Smaller mating units are more likely to cause avm as the virgins are hassled out to mate sooner than they are old be from a more confident unit and so the virgin is less ready for lift off to break the immediate drone atmosphere of her apiary,,,maybe.

----------


## Jon

I have seen it from a full hive at Minnowburn where we have the association apiary.
I was working with the bees and I saw the mating swarm in the air. The queen landed on a post and the bees settled around her.
There were no apideas there at the time and when I checked there was a colony with an open supersedure cell.
I think this happens from full colonies but is far more obvious when you have 100 apideas sitting together when 20 or 30 queens might take a mating flight on the same day. Hard to miss under these circumstances. I have seen it at 4 different sites including my own garden so it is not some quirky coincidence with a congregation area.

----------


## busybeephilip

> Smaller mating units are more likely to cause avm as the virgins are hassled out to mate sooner than they are old be from a more confident unit and so the virgin is less ready for lift off to break the immediate drone atmosphere of her apiary,,,maybe.


The immature virgin theory ..... could be but virgins are very active and jumpy from a young age.  If AVM was a very common event and related to Amm then queens with small clusters on bees landing wherever would also be a very common event resulting in the loss of a great many queens being unable, for whatever reason,  to return to their colonies.  In a large/medium mating apairy the result would be mayhem but this has never been shown to be a problem in large commercial operations otherwise we would have heard a lot more about it.  Is there any evidence for these small clusters from (IMO absconding) apideas to decamp and return to the apidea ? or do scouts look for a new home....  This could explain losses of queens during mating.   Logically, if queens are reared from material with AVM traits then this may result in an increased risk of queens being lost then this trait is not a good one for the survival of a colony and may also encourage inbreeding

----------


## busybeephilip

> I have seen it from a full hive at Minnowburn where we have the association apiary.
> I was working with the bees and I saw the mating swarm in the air. The queen landed on a post and the bees settled around her.
> ............ I checked there was a colony with an open supersedure cell.


So the colony had already swarmed with original queen or original queen was removed or died, first queen to hatch heads out with a cast, remaing cells hatch and head the colony ?

Maybe you distracted the swarm/mating swarm from returning to their hive?  It does not make sense for them not to return to the hive if this is part of a mating event

----------


## Jon

I didn't know where the queen had come from and I collected her with the bees in a spare apidea. It was the next day I found the hive with the open supersedure cell.
I probably wrecked a perfectly good supersedure.
Funny enough, that colony went on for another year before superseding again. I found both queens laying together. The queen was in her 4th year at that point.
I mark and clip all my queens so if I find an unmarked queen in a colony it must have superseded or swarmed.

----------


## busybeephilip

Further to AVM (apairy vacinity mating) does anyone know of any peer reviewed articles reviewing this phenomena.  Seely's name was suggested but I cant find any published material

I do have coopers book but the descriptions are of second hand observations and I dont beleive they can be reliable

----------


## fatshark

If it continues like this the queen will have to mate inside the hive ...

----------


## busybeephilip

> If it continues like this the queen will have to mate inside the hive ...



Within hive mating (WHM) - perhaps a cape bee thing which occurs very rarely in Amm where there has been a genetic mix in the distant past or mutation due to environmental chemicals - boggled

----------


## Jon

I spoke to Tom Seeley about Apiary Vicinity Mating and he suggested that Dave Tarpy would be the guy to contact about it.

----------


## busybeephilip

sounds like Seeley does not support the theory of AVM or just does not know

I cant find anything credable that has been peer reviewed to support AVM,  Coopers book (1968) records conflicting visual observations from beekeepers but nothing concrete, infact one observation describes a grounded queen being pursued by drones, any account I have heard relates to a small clump of bees on a post or the ground that are mostly if not all workers. Typical absconding behaviour, (bees leave their hive, cluster then move off later  if the weather or starvation does not kill them , the same as normal swarming)

Clearly a lot more detailed observation and supporting evidence is needed to show that mating actually does take place in aimless type swarms circling just yards a few feet off the ground 3-4 meters front of an apidea, nuc box or hive.  A video showing the moment of mating, circling of drones should be possible to produce since the event is totally local yet this has never been shown.

----------


## busybeephilip

> sounds like Seeley does not support the theory of AVM or just does not know
> 
> .


I too, have contacted Seely on this, he does not know what is happening however he does confirm that if a nuc has not enough bees in it they will go out (abscond) with the queen when she flies.  So what AVM is is the queen leaving the nuc for the first time taking an orientation flight in front of the nuc doing some local circling with the few bees from the nuc aimlessly following her scent, in other words a minature swarm,  which, in some cases,  does not return to the nuc and is interpreted as absconding.  So, logically,  it appears that AVM is not a real queen mating event but an absconding event.

Is it myth busted ?

----------


## prakel

> I too, have contacted Seely on this, he does not know what is happening however he does confirm that if a nuc has not enough bees in it they will go out (abscond) with the queen when she flies.


I'm sure some of the older books state this in a very matter of fact way -can't think of specifics at present but I may be tempted to search a couple of references out.




> So what AVM is is the queen leaving the nuc for the first time taking an orientation flight in front of the nuc doing some local circling with the few bees from the nuc aimlessly following her scent, in other words a minature swarm,  which, in some cases,  does not return to the nuc and is interpreted as absconding.  So, logically,  it appears that AVM is not a real queen mating event but an absconding event.
> 
> Is it myth busted ?


There are a few references of usurpation among European honey bees -seem to remember the Drone-Ranger mentioning one a week or two ago on this forum.... maybe another natural extension of whatever is happening here.

Myth busted? Probably best (for the long term health of the bees) if it has been unless the research showing the benefits of mating across a large gene pool is wrong.

----------


## Jon

> Clearly a lot more detailed observation and supporting evidence is needed to show that mating actually does take place in aimless type swarms circling just yards a few feet off the ground 3-4 meters front of an apidea, nuc box or hive.


If you witness this happening and check 2-3 days later the queen will have just started to lay. I have done that several times which suggests to me that the queen mates during this process.

----------


## Jon

> I too, have contacted Seely on this, he does not know what is happening however he does confirm that if a nuc has not enough bees in it they will go out (abscond) with the queen when she flies.  So what AVM is is the queen leaving the nuc for the first time taking an orientation flight in front of the nuc doing some local circling with the few bees from the nuc aimlessly following her scent, in other words a minature swarm,  which, in some cases,  does not return to the nuc and is interpreted as absconding.  So, logically,  it appears that AVM is not a real queen mating event but an absconding event.
> 
> Is it myth busted ?


That is not what I am seeing at all. I have witnessed the bees and queen leaving the apidea, circling around for 10 minutes then returning to the apidea.
Check 2-3 days later and you find eggs.
The queen takes several orientation flights before she takes one or more mating flights.
I have seen queens leaving on orientation flights probably 100 times and I have that on video.
The mating flight accompanied by a coterie of workers is a different phenomenon.
The problem with video is that all you see is a small swarm of bees in the air. I have managed to pick out the queen in the air a couple of times as she has a distinctive silhouette and the her wings sound different from either workers or drones.


.

Orientation flights can take place from early morning and at low temperatures such as 10c but I only see mating flights take place between 12.30 and about 5.30 when it is a lot warmer.
Most orientation flights only last a minute or two. If you see the queen leave and you wait, you will often see her come back as well.

----------


## busybeephilip

The video shows a queen leaving and returning, could be first flight.  Queens leave nucs several times a day to mate so 2-3 days later means very little.

----------


## fatshark

Nice video Jon … looks like the workers chased her out to get some practice for the big day.

----------


## busybeephilip

Until there is real evidence of AVM I remain sceptical,  perhaps radio tag a virgin queen would be an interesting research propsal

----------


## Jon

That video was shot in the morning at a low temperature and you can see her landing back at the apidea after 30 seconds. That's an orientation flight. You can see her doing the classic orientation movements in the air in front of the apidea. If you have a site with 100 apideas on it and most of them contain virgin queens several days old you will see this on a regular basis.
Most queens take a single mating flight, sometimes two and very occasionally more than two. There are research paper published on that.
People who have never witnessed AVM or a mating swarm are likely to argue that it probably does not exist.
I am a natural skeptic and if there are viable alternative explanations I am happy to accept them but nothing else explains what I see as well as AvM.

----------


## Jon

There has been work done with RFID transmitters with regard to queen mating.



Insects 2014, 5(3), 513-527; doi:10.3390/insects5030513
Article
Observation of the Mating Behavior of Honey Bee (Apis mellifera L.) Queens Using Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID): Factors Influencing the Duration and Frequency of Nuptial Flights
Ina Monika Margret Heidinger 1,2,*, Marina Doris Meixner 1, Stefan Berg 2 and Ralph Büchler 1

----------


## mbc

I suppose seeing her leave a hive, not get very far and then return with mating sign would be fairly conclusive. I've witnessed what I assumed was avm but not quite as definitive as above because I haven't yet spotted where she left from or see her return with sign, I'd hazard it's a fairly unusual way for mating to occur and so even when one loiters around the mating apiary for days on end actually witnessing it happening takes the luck of the stars aligning.

----------


## Pete L

> Pete L says that he sees it too with his Buckfast.


Yes, several times, but only in the isolated mating mating sites, i don't believe they even form fixed drone congregation areas in some of these places, have  seen  up to fifteen individual virgins being pursued at high speed by what i would estimate to be anything from 50 to well over 100 drones in each separate group, like the comet description, not seen any workers at all in these groups, just a virgin and drones, it really is like very fast aerial acrobatics, twisting and turning very fast, every angle, even crashing into the ground, willow bushes and even us a couple of times, but up and gone again within a split second, during this time the drone provider colonies are incredibly noisy and active, then all goes quiet for about ten minutes or so at the drone provider hives, same at the mating nucs,  ... then it all starts up again, this usually happens several times for around two and a half hours or so in the afternoon, on a reasonably warm day, or even on a very hot day perfect for mating, when checking the mating nucs around six in the evening, after the activities have ceased, many of the queens have the mating sign, drone appendage sticking out from their abdomen. It would appear that only the very fittest and fastest drones get to mate with the virgin queens after observing this.

----------


## busybeephilip

> There has been work done with RFID transmitters with regard to queen mating.
> 
> 
> Insects 2014, 5(3), 513-527; doi:10.3390/insects5030513
> Article
> Observation of the Mating Behavior of Honey Bee (Apis mellifera L.) Queens Using Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID): Factors Influencing the Duration and Frequency of Nuptial Flights
> Ina Monika Margret Heidinger 1,2,*, Marina Doris Meixner 1, Stefan Berg 2 and Ralph Büchler 1


An interesting paper.  work was done with Am ligusta and if AVM is unique to Am mellifera then there was nothing about it in this paper so possibly confirming that concept.  Some of the work would need to be repeated with Amm to prove AVM actually exists.  I still remain open minded but solid evidence is required to convince me.
Phil

----------


## busybeephilip

> I suppose seeing her leave a hive, not get very far and then return with mating sign would be fairly conclusive. I've witnessed what I assumed was avm but not quite as definitive as above because I haven't yet spotted where she left from or see her return with sign, I'd hazard it's a fairly unusual way for mating to occur and so even when one loiters around the mating apiary for days on end actually witnessing it happening takes the luck of the stars aligning.


If you freeze frame when she returns there is no mating sign visible

----------


## Jon

That was definitely an orientation flight mating sign or no mating sign. She was only out of the Apidea for 30 seconds.
The apidea was in my front garden and the virgin was not old enough to take a mating flight.
Orientation flights can start from about 4 days after emergence and mating flights from about 6 days onwards.
The earliest I have ever seen eggs is 8 days from emergence which suggests mating around day 6.

I have seen queens return to an apidea showing a mating sign a couple of times but never managed to get a photo.
These were not queens I saw mating locally, just queens returning after a flight to who knows where.

----------


## prakel

> Some of the work would need to be repeated with Amm to prove AVM actually exists


One thing that strikes me about this is the apparent lack of reference to such activity by the old (eighteenth and early nineteenth century) beekeepers some of whom were plainly astute observers with more than a handful of colonies.

----------


## Feckless Drone

> actually witnessing it happening takes the luck of the stars aligning.


Should have bought a lottery ticket! Sunday early afternoon, warm and calm (not me I was panicking about losing swarms) and I noted what seemed like alot of drones around two frame mating nucs and other colonies. Then, not once, not twice but three times in succession, two of the mating nucs and one colony, bees rushing out and creating a  swarming effect just above the garden. Bees flopping down on leaves but never congregating into a mass, then after 10-15 minutes lots of fanning and bees return home. I watched but did not see any Qs returning, did not see any drone comets but the timings are all perfect  for mating flights. Never seen this before but then I'm maybe not around when this happens. I cannot prove this is AVM but certainly follows descriptions given in this thread. Great to see actually. I will not be disturbing the colonies for at least another week or two.

----------


## Adam

If queens go out on orientation flights, would the odd drone just "get lucky" and mate with the queen even though she wasn't expecting it to happen I wonder? Or would she not be producing the correct pheromone for mating during these flights?

Today I have returned home to see a virgin arrive back to a nuc. I had some lunch and had another look and it happened that she arrived back again. I suspect it's too cold for mating here - 15 degrees - but she is up and about at least.

The view that queens mate over "2 or 3 days" may be true but I have seen it when queens all go up on the one warm day that we've had for weeks and then 2 - 3 days later they have all started laying - so it can happen on one day.

----------


## Jon

There is a paper which looks at the number of mating flights taken. Might have been by Jerzy Woyke but not 100% sure.
The number varies from 1 to about 5. I think the average number was on the low side, either one or two flights needed.
Sunday was a perfect mating day here hitting 21c. Sadly the only one of mine who might benefit is a supersedure virgin queen.
My first batch of grafted queens are due to emerge this Sunday 14th.

----------

