I truly thank you all for your honesty. It is refreshing. I work in a team of 6 young individuals from around the world and are given scenarios which would require far from what would be considered conventional remedies. We have no emotional investment and can come across strictly academic at times but it's required to get the results required.
What a fascinating and stimulating
modus operandi !
Your choice of the honeybee was, unfortunately, not a good one. For two reasons:
Firstly, much of the life of the honeybee (how it communicates, navigates etc) - despite decades of intensive academic study - remains unknown. For many beekeepers, the behaviour of the bee is thus almost 'magical', and is part of the attraction of keeping them.
Secondly, the honeybee is essentially a hunter-scavenger which has evolved to operate over an extensive area, and the forager-scouts in particular would not take kindly to living under restricted conditions - for they have been programmed by evolution to constantly seek out new sources of food across a wide area.
As you ask about mating issues, then I assume you are thinking in terms of replicating the life-cycle of the honeybee completely, under your environmentally-controlled and thus restricted conditions ? If so, then the next problem to be addressed is that of swarming.
The honeybee invokes two mechanisms for species replication: the first being the production of large quantities of drones in the hope of spreading successful genetics far and wide and onto (or rather, into) other colonies.
The second is the replication of the colony itself, which it does by dividing-up the colony at a time of year most suited for successful relocation, for it is a period of extreme vulnerability, when roughly one-half of the colony takes to the air, perhaps without any clear idea of where they will next be setting-up home.
From a survival point-of-view it would not do for such replication to result in yet another colony to set-up home 'immediately next door', so to speak, as there must always be a limit to how many colonies can be supported within a given foraging area - and so swarms invariably re-locate some considerable distance away, in order to spread the 'foraging burden' further afield. In the situation you are proposing, of course, the swarm simply has nowhere to go.
There are also other considerations, such as the in-breeding which would invariably result (by preventing drones from elsewhere from bringing-in their genetics), and the strong possibility of a disease outbreak occurring from environmental confinement. Sadly, this is not a pretty picture I'm painting.
We were not aware of the great heights required for the mating of drones. I wonder if perhaps a room mimicking the pressure, temp, and wind factors would encourage them to mate?
Simply on the side of mating. Is there no one who has had success breeding virgin queens to drones in a confined space?
Rather than type lots of words on this, I'll direct you to:
http://chestofbooks.com/animals/bees/History/Chapter-XII-Search-For-Controlled-Mating.htmlwhere you will see that a local system of more-or-less natural Controlled Mating has been the Holy Grail of beekeepers since the advent of modern beekeeping (1850-ish onwards) - but always without success.
or is that naive and ignorant to even suggest?
Not at all. It is only by proposing such ideas that dreams can be turned into reality. I am myself engaged in pursuing this very goal by the use of a wind tunnel and a novel method of queen attachment which has never been tried before. But I have no illusions about the likelihood of failure.
No worries about being 'clueless' - each one of us is ignorant and clueless at some point in our lives, especially when tackling a new subject area. I'm only sorry that I have such a jaundiced picture to paint regarding this particular project.
Does your project have to involve honeybees - is there not another, more domesticated animal which could be employed ?
Good luck, and very best wishes,
LJ