moving a colony or apidea with a virgin queen

[Jon]

yesterday I checked the apideas we had put cells into on Tuesday and most of them had hatched. I checked by removing the cell cup and checking that the queen had emerged.

The apideas are still closed up and a lot of them are to be given to beginners next week as part of out pilot project to let them have bees to observe and tinker with before their nucs are ready.

I can leave them closed up until next week or I could set them out around the allotment and open them so that the bees can fly.
The problem is that a queen can take an orientation flight after 3 days so some might have flown in one place before being transferred to another.

What happens if a virgin flies and orientates and is then transferred to another location before she has mated. Does she reorientate the next time she leaves the apidea or is she likely to get lost?

I decided to leave them closed up but does anyone know what happens if you move a virgin after it has flown but before it has taken its mating flight?

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[gavin]

Ahh ... a picture is worth a thousand words!

You would imagine that as a queen is just a souped-up worker (or a worker a dumbed-down queen) she would re-orientate. Who knows though (not me!), queens clearly take wrong turnings so maybe they rely more than they should on their flock guiding them home.

[Adam]

I assume she would reorientate too - I guess the 3 mile rule still applies.

[Jimbo]

On moving a batch of Mini Nucs to their mating sites today I heard the virgin queens piping. This was a first for me and I was not quite certain what I was hearing. It is very distinct and quite loud.

[Jon]

You should have heard the piping coming from that stack in the middle picture I posted above.