Honey Bee Queen & Drone mating inflight

Spectacular footage from ”More than Honey” capturing the many wonders of our world. Remember the main purpose of the drone is to mate in-flight with the queen bee.  You will notice their body sizes are larger than worker bees, though usually smaller than the queen bee, and they have to fly fast enough to accompany the queen on her flight, dying soon after mating with her. Only early in her life will the queen make several mating flights, mating with an average of 12 drones a flight. These eggs she then stores for the rest of her life, which is an average of 2 to 3 years.

According to The Guardian this clip which is part of ‘More Than Honey’, “a new film exploring the global crisis facing honeybees, director Markus Imhoof used mini-helicopters and high-speed cameras to capture an extraordinary video of the inflight mating of a virgin queen bee. It took 10 days to get 36 seconds of footage at Heidrun Singer’s hives in Austria. ‘Our most effective trick was patience,’ Imhoof said.”

Copyright: A snip of footage from The Guardian published by ScienceDuude on YouTube on Sep 6, 2013

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