Virgin queen orientation flight from apidea

[Jon]

I have 11 apideas with virgin queens in my front garden at the moment.
I took this video about half an hour ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUWAo6xFySs) with the temperature about 12c.
You can see the bees pushing the queen encouraging her to take a flight.
She runs up the right hand side of the apidea, takes off and then lands back in the apidea after about 30 seconds and goes back in.

This one was grafted on 19th May and emerged 31st May.
She has been stuck in the apidea ever since and is approaching her sell by date.
I would say she has about a week left to get in a mating flight before going stale.

The mother of this one was the last queen I got mated last autumn and is a supersedure queen. She started laying on 1st October.

[The Drone Ranger]

Good video Jon
Just like mama bird shoving the fledglings out of the nest :)

Actually better than good excellent
You must be camped out in front of those hives day and night :)

[drumgerry]

Great video Jon. She's a dark one eh?! Hope she and the others get mated this week for you.

[Jon]

You must be camped out in front of those hives day and night :)

I was leaving on the bike to check colonies at my allotment around lunchtime today and I noticed a lot of workers at the entrance of the apidea. These apideas are just a few feet from my front door under fruit trees I have out the front.
The worker activity usually means a queen is about to leave or they are waiting for her return. I saw the queen on the porch of the apidea at this point and went back in for the camera and I had the recording within 5 minutes. Just lucky timing rather than camping out.

Checked 9 more apideas at the allotment and saw 8 of the queens and topped up the feeders.
I have 3 mating sites this year, the garden, the allotment and the association apiary so will be interesting to see if any one site is better than the others. The garden is 1.3 miles from 8 drone colonies at the association apiary and 2.6 miles from 10 I have at the allotment. I have 2 full of drones at the bottom of the garden as well.

I know you always like those drone updates DR.


She's a dark one eh?! Hope she and the others get mated this week for you.

All the ones I graft turn out dark.
I never graft from a colony which has any yellow banded workers as it means a certain percentage of the grafts would be hybrids.

[gavin]

Cool! They certainly seem to 'know' that she needs to fly. Do you think that orientation flights can take place at cooler temps than mating flights?

The three most persistent workers pushing her to fly have their wings held out in a V-shape, just like a human would do if herding geese, hens, sheep.

Not that we have wings of course. I'm distracted by the footie on the telly.

[Jon]

Cool! They certainly seem to 'know' that she needs to fly. Do you think that orientation flights can take place at cooler temps than mating flights?

The three most persistent workers pushing her to fly have their wings held out in a V-shape, just like a human would do if herding geese, hens, sheep.


They definitely can take orientation flights at cooler temperatures and also outside the mating flight window which is pretty much confined from 1pm to 5.30pm.
Did you notice one of the three workers which pushed her off returned to the entrance of the apidea and immediately started to fan, ie having pushed the queen out it moved on to the next task of attracting her back.

[gavin]

Didn't spot at first that but I can see it now. Presumably we're watching leader bees. Bee policewomen, bee politicians, bee managers. I wonder if the 300ml doesn't include any normally willing to take the lead, are there others willing to step up to the plate as it were? Do bee hierarchies self-assemble?

[Jon]

Do bee hierarchies self-assemble?

My guess would be that they do - if the main elements are in place - virgin queen, youngish bees, and foragers, stores, comb.
This must be an elaborate interaction between innate or heritable traits, the level of pheromone present and the weather.

[gavin]

And once more it is fascinating to consider what is going on in the bee's head.

[Jon]

They cannot be 'thinking'
I suppose the question is what is controlling the behaviour.

[gavin]

Are you sure? Something happens between experience and reaction. At some level the bee 'realises' that fanning the 'come home' scent is a good idea, and it goes off to do it.

What about the bee that had a bad experience at a feeding site, returns home, sees a waggle dance promoting the dangerous site, and then 'decides' to stop the waggle dance?

There is the dorso-ventral abdominal vibration signal. The right response is to 'say' OK, fine, I accept the signal by straightening out and holding the wings stiff down the back. In a video in the communications talk in the local association area you can see a bee looking irritated and doing a spot of self-grooming. Another bee comes up to it and does the dorso-ventral abdominal vibration thingie. The receiving bee was 'thinking' about asking for grooming as you can see it do not the right response but an inappropriate one, where it 'submits' to grooming by spreading its wings out and curling down the adbomen tip. And the bee doing the dorso-ventral shaking realises the bee didn't understand and does it again.

[EmsE]

They cannot be 'thinking'
I suppose the question is what is controlling the behaviour.

why not 'thinking'?

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[Jon]

I suppose I just have difficulty with the concept of an insect capable of thinking.
Surely pretty much all the insect behaviours are controlled by a combination of heritable traits, external stimuli such as heat and cold, and pheromone.
I would concede that a Labrador can 'think' if the outcome is a food reward, but even in that case how much of it is a mixture of operant and classical conditioning.

[EmsE]

I think every animal and insect is per programmed to some extent- some more than others but they must have the ability to think to survive / evolve.

In Gavins post in the LA section there's a video of a bee misiterprating the dance of another bee which can only be done (I think) if there is the element of thinking involved?

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[Mellifera Crofter]

It sounds as though the bees were applauding the queen as she leaves. I'm not sure that I could spot her returning.

[Jon]

She lands in the middle of the entrance porch about 1:38 and walks from left to right into the entrance at the right.
She is in the air in front of the apidea a couple of times before that but very out of focus.

[Jon]

Here's another one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKizJnn7vF8) at lunchtime today.
There were several outside the apideas having a sniff around.

[gavin]

Again the worker 'encouraging' her to go was holding its wings at 45 degrees. Just another aspect of bee communication that we can decipher for ourselves (as long as Jon or someone records it and makes it available for repeated viewing).