The influence of a colony's queen state on the drifting of drone honey bees (Apis mellifera L)

Abstract - Drones were marked individually with numbered tags and introduced into pairs of hives that were spaced 1 m apart facing south. The queen state of one colony in each pair was altered (ie with a caged-virgin queen, caged-mated queen, mated-laying queen, queenless or pheromone trans-9-oxodecenoic acid) and the other member of the pair remained queenright. Drifting of 4 independent age groups of drones (5-10, 10-15, 15-20 and 20-25-d old) was studied. A higher proportion of drones drifted to colonies with caged-virgin queens or to colonies with lures containing a component of the virgin queen's pheromone, trans-9-oxodec-2-enoic acid, than to either queenless colonies, queenright colonies or colonies with caged-mated queens. The proportion of drones that drifted to colonies containing virgin queens increased with the age of the drone. There was a tendency for drones from queenright colonies to drift westward. This appears to have masked the attraction of drones to pairs of hives that had the pheromone or virgin queen-treated colonies in the westerly position. Drift of drones away from colonies with virgin queens was not significantly lower than drift from either queenright or queenless colonies.