. Where do the drones come from for mating? And if someone has only a few hives, would there be a possibility for too much inbreeding?
In normal hive there are hundreds of drones. They fly in on the sky long disances.
Queen flyes over 5 km to go over distance of its own drones. It try to avoid inbreeding. Queen copulates with 8-16 drones during one or two days. Even rainy day can be between those days. I have seen that.
Even in Finland we have difficulties to find place where is no other beekepers's drones on the sky. When I go in any direction in my summer place, I will meet other hives at the distance of 10 km.
But that 5 km distance is more theory than true. When I have that mating place and I had big Monticola bee hive there, most queens mated with it's own yard drones. My friend have 40 italian hives at the distance of 8 km and I had 10 italian.
Also I have wild dark bees 5 km to north in the tower of shurch. I have not noticed that queen have brought that blood from that direction.
If you use every year same stock, dander of insemination is true.
You can see a little filament in the arse of queen after mating trip. It happens at the hottest point of the day about 14-15 a'clock.
When I walk in the nature I can see few bees in most places. Even honey catching worker can fly 4 km distance and during summer wild swarms can move 5-10 km from starting point.
When we had "dark German race" in Finland 15 years ago, they were quick to copulate with all queens. Now varroa have vanished these totally. - thanks to varroa. It is my friend! Those dark Gemans were worse than varroa! (killer bees somethimes)