Abstract
Cordovan virgin queens (164) were mated in an area where the drone population consisted of cordovan and wild-type drones in a ratio of 1:1. With such a drone population ratio, the relative frequency of mating calculated from progeny tests fits the theoretical binomial frequency for 7 matings. Related tests conducted in another area where the drone population was unknown yielded similar results. The analysis of all off-spring data from 467 genetically-marked queens indicates that the queens mated an average of 7 times.

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