Queen Deaths

[mikecva]

I know about queens deaths in the hive. I have wondered about queens going out to be mated: Can the queen be over loaded with sperm to the point that she can not make it back to the hive; can a drone not drop off after mating and pull the queen to the grown; and lastly how susceptible is the queen to being picked off by birds while in the mating area?  -Mike

[BeeMaster2]

The amount of sperm by weight in not a problem, Each male will inject about 5 million sperm but she normally only keeps about 1 million. She will mate with as many males as she can, normally as many as 12-20 males and as high as 60.
Quite often the female carries the male member, which weighs a lot more than all of the sperm combined, back to the hive where the bees will remove it. During the mating the next male removes the previous males member.
Queens are very susceptible to predation. She has the same size wings as the rest of the bees with a lot more weight. She has very little flying time. All of which means she is a slower/fatter meal to catch. I lose a lot of queens to mating flights. It would be nice if they waited until they mate to fight and decide which one will bee queen.  A major queen breeder in Georgia had to move his operations due to queen  predation a few years back.
Jim