The other day I recorded a queen bee mating flight.. Well not the flight but her leaving the box and returning. This is pretty exciting because this is the only time when the queen leaves the hive in a 3-5 year period. Not much footage exists on this topic and its good to have something now.
I would be interested to hear other people’s observations on this topic. Have you witnessed a queen leaving the hive? Do you know how long she was out?
To read a bit more about native queen bee mating flight and her behavior see here.
I saw a virgin queen running around on top of one of my boxes today, like in Nicks video. Maybe this is a normal part of the mating ritual? Pretty cool.