Drone Congregation Area
Lexikon
A drone congregation area is a meeting point in the air where drones from many colonies in the wider surroundings gather and wait for virgin queens.
A drone congregation area is a meeting point in the air where drones from many colonies in the wider surroundings gather and wait for virgin queens. About a week after hatching, a young queen flies there for her mating flight. At the congregation area she meets drones from other colonies, not her own brothers, and mates with several of them. This multiple mating is biologically intended: it ensures genetic diversity in the later colony and avoids inbreeding.
The distances involved vary. Drones preferentially fly to the nearest congregation area, typically up to around two kilometers away. Queens frequently bypass nearby areas and seek out ones farther away, often more than three kilometers from their own apiary. This too serves to avoid inbreeding. A drone that succeeds dies during mating; the queen then returns to her colony and begins laying eggs a few days later.
Many figures circulate about the exact flight altitude, but little of this is well established. The question of what drones use to choose and relocate these areas has also not been conclusively settled scientifically. What is documented, however, is that the same congregation areas persist in the same spot over years. Figures such as a preferred flight altitude of 10 to 20 meters should therefore be treated with caution.
For practice, this leads to one thing above all: the beekeeper cannot determine where the queen mates at their own apiary. With open mating, the drone situation in the surrounding area decides the fathers. Anyone who wants to control mating deliberately uses mating stations that are remote, have a protective radius of several kilometers, and are stocked with selected drone colonies.
Quellen (4)
- LAVES Institut für Bienenkunde Celle: Bienenbiologie, eine Einführung (PDF)
- Imkerverband Unterfranken, Belegstelle Gramschatzer Wald: Drohnensammelplätze und Belegstellenbegattung
- bienen&natur (Deutsches Bienen-Journal): Was passiert beim Hochzeitsflug der Königin?
- Wikipedia: Drohnensammelplatz (mit Literatur von Ruttner und Koeniger)