Martins and Drones

At Peace Bee Farm, we enjoy the purple martins for half of the year. These largest of the swallows arrive in February, nest in artificial gourds that we provide for them, rear young birds, and then leave without fanfare in July. During the six months that they occupy the farm, they entertain us daily with their song, which is almost speech, and their flight, which some describe as aerial acrobatics. Anyone who has observed these popular birds knows their ability to climb, dive, and soar can’t be matched by other birds. They can regularly be seen sweeping along the surface of lakes or soaring hundreds of feet in the air, catching insects in flight. When they approach their nest, they dive at great speed. It is not uncommon for us to see drone honey bees chasing the martins as the birds circle their nesting gourds or sweep in for a landing. Sometimes a single drone follows a martin; at times half a dozen drones will be in close pursuit. The drones, which normally pursue queen bees in their mating flights, have no trouble keeping up with the rapid, turning flight of the martins. Click on the photo and you can see a number of drones that followed the martin all the way back to the perch above their nesting gourds.

The purple martin is an insect eater and a very efficient gatherer of flying insects. It is obvious that our martins frequent the drone concentration areas and bring back drones visually focused on the zooming birds. I don’t know how many drones and queen bees are eaten by these birds along the way, but I do feel that the birds are doing their part to eliminate weak drones and queens from the mating areas. If this is the case, the martins are helping select for stronger honey bees. The martins will spend the next six months in the Amazon River basin. I wonder if their other home is a similar bee farm in the Southern Hemisphere.
--Richard

The Queen Bee Makes a Mating Flight

The queen bee is responsible for producing all of the eggs for the honey bee colony. Unlike organisms that mate again and again for the production of each offspring, the queen honey bee mates but once for a lifetime of egg laying. This occurs in a series of mating flights which typically occur over a day or two about five or six days after the queen’s emergence as an adult. During these flights, the queen bee will mate in the air with between twelve and twenty drone bees. She will store the sperm from these flights in an internal organ for the length of her life. This sperm will be used to produce fertile eggs to produce either workers or queen bees. She also lays non-fertile eggs to produce drones. By mating with a number of drones, the queen is assured of bringing genetic diversity to the colony’s offspring. Some of those diverse genes may be just the ones needed for the colony to survive in a changing environment.

I happened to be checking the queen mating nucleus hives on the day that a number of young queens were making mating flights. It appeared that the queen from this colony was outside the hive at the time I was checking it. I found no queen in the hive. The bees on every frame appeared to be fanning air with their wings across their raised abdomens. This is done to blow a plume of pheromones out through the air to guide bees to the hive. In this case all of the bees were involved in guiding their queen back home. Click on the photo and see the bees at the top of the hive’s frames posed to fan pheromones. While the bees look disturbed and disorganized, they were actually quite calm. The fanning by the bees shows the importance to the entire colony for the success of the mating flight. I feel like this is the most unique photo that I have taken inside a bee hive.
--Richard