If Roger can imagine up a ley line I reckon a bee can also rise to the occasion.
I find ley lines hard to accept but I feel the same way about water divining too. Unfortunately the unsettling fact is that I have seen both apparently working.
Sorry - I should have looked that up!
Landscape structure is part of the honey bee environment. Surely drone congregation takes place in parts of the environment (warm/sheltered?) likely to give a greater chance of mating success. So - these parts of the landscape are likely to be used year after year by drones, who probably find them in similar ways that workers find the best food sources.
I suspect they are attracted to thermals as much as anything else so that they can float about all afternoon saving their energy for the big chase.
The smart ones (from my point of view) mate over the apiary!
No riff-raff drones in the mix.
I wonder if this is a heritable trait.
I witness this on several occasions most summers.
I should hold on to these queens and set up an apiary where all the queens in it have mated locally and see if it is something you can select for.
This one mated over the apiary and started laying two weeks ago.
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