A new study has discovered that thousands of male bees gather around “lekking areas” waiting for queen bees to appear for mating.
Experts from the London and Rothamsted research centers at Queen Mary University have utilized radar technology to track the flight paths of male bees searching for mates, revealing secrets about their mating behavior.
They found that male bees tend to congregate at aerial “lekking areas,” waiting for queen bees to arrive for mating.
The “lekking areas” of honeybees are similar to the mating grounds of deer and grouse.
However, unlike deer or grouse, male bees often move between various “lekking areas” while waiting for queen bees, even though potential mates are rarely seen.
For a long time, researchers have suspected that male bees gather in large swarms, up to 10,000 individuals, to achieve a common goal of mating with queen bees in mid-air.
Scientists are still unclear about how male honeybees locate these aerial “lekking areas” to wait for queen bees.
Previous analyses of this behavior in bees used bait to attract them, raising suspicions that the large gatherings of bees were due to bait.
However, the new study using radar technology to track male bees has demonstrated that the congregation of bees in large swarms during mating is a natural occurrence.
According to the researchers, queen bees are harder to track but are also attracted to the “lekking areas” where thousands of male bees are waiting to mate.
Currently, scientists are still unsure how these aerial “lekking areas” of honeybees are maintained across generations so that male bees can find them, especially since male bees hatch in the summer and only live for 20 days, preventing them from learning from previous generations.
“Our findings suggest that male honeybees can locate the ‘lekking areas’ right after their second flight without needing to search extensively. This indicates that male honeybees must have the ability to receive the necessary guiding information to find the lek. We are investigating this issue,” said behavioral ecologist Lars Chittka from Queen Mary University in London.
