I’ve seen plenty of mating aggregations of the species and although the males ball around the queens enthusiastically, as far as I’ve seen the queens only seem to allow for one “hook-up”. After a few minutes they seperate and the queens fly off or remove their wings on the spot.
Hm. So mating takes place on the ground? If so, I might be able to catch it happening and not have to give the queen a male to mate with. Perhaps they didn't actually mate, and the female rejected the male even though he climbed on top of her.
I'm going back to the spot where a lot of them are tomorrow and try to catch nuptial flights.
