Scientists from Queen Mary University of London and Rothamsted Research have used radar technology to track male honeybees called drones, and reveal the secrets of their mating behaviors.
The study, published in the latest issue of the iScience journal, suggests that male bees swarm together in specific aerial locations to find and attempt to mate with queens. The researchers found that drones also move between different congregation areas during a single flight.
Drones have one main purpose in life, to mate with queens in mid-air. Beekeepers and some scientists have long believed that drones gather in huge numbers of up to 10,000 in locations known as 'drone congregation areas'.
Previous research has used pheromone lures to attract drones, raising concerns that these lures could have inadvertently caused these congregations.
This new study is the first ever attempt to track the flight paths of individual drones and observe them in the absence of lures.
Similar mating sites, in which large numbers of males gather, have been observed in other animals but this is the first time males have been observed to move between multiple locations, hinting at the discovery of a new type of animal mating system.
According to a report released on the website of the Queen Mary University, researchers attached a small antenna-like electronic device, known as a transponder, to the back of individual honeybees to track the flight paths of drones. When the transponder receives a radar signal from the transmitter, it absorbs its energy and converts it into a higher frequency signal, which is then detected by the radar antenna.
Using this system, the researchers were able to track the bee's position relative to the radar every 3 seconds with an accuracy of around 2m.
The scientists found that drones alternated between periods of straight and convoluted, looping flight patterns within a single flight. They also showed that phases of looping flight were associated with four distinct aerial locations where drones congregated and these specific areas were consistent over a two-year period.
The researchers propose that drone congregation areas could function like 'leks', mating systems in which large numbers of males gather solely in an attempt to mate. Lek systems are most well known in vertebrates, like deer and grouse, and males are typically faithful to a single lek location.
