A mating yard is a term for an

apiary An apiary (also known as a bee yard) is a location where beehives of honey bees are kept. Apiaries come in many sizes and can be rural or urban depending on the honey production operation. Furthermore, an apiary may refer to a hobbyist's hives or ...

which consists primarily of queen mating

nuc Nucs, or nucleus colonies, are small honey bee colonies created from larger colonies, packages, or captured swarms. A nuc hive is centered on a queen bee, the nucleus of the honey bee colony. Layout A nuc hive has all the features of a standard ...

s and hives which raise drones. A

queen bee A queen bee is typically an adult, mated female (gyne) that lives in a colony or hive of honey bees. With fully developed reproductive organs, the queen is usually the mother of most, if not all, of the bees in the beehive. Queens are developed ...

must mate in order to lay fertilized eggs, which develop into workers and other queens, which are both female. Queens can lay eggs parthenogenetically, but these will always develop into drones (males).

Mating nucs

A mating yard allows dozens of queens to mate and begin to lay. The hives in a mating yard are primarily mating nucs or drone producing hives. Mating nucs are smaller than normal nucs, often containing non self-sustaining numbers of bees. The beekeeper will replenish the workers in a mating nuc by shaking additional bees into mating nucs when their population is running low.

Drone producing hives

Drone producing hives produce abnormally large numbers of drones. By using drone foundation in the brood nest a beekeeper can produce a large drone population to saturate the Drone Congregation area with drones of a given stock. Saturating the drone congregation area improves the odds that the queen will mate with drones of a particular lineage, but does not guarantee it.

Open mating

This method of mating is called "open mating." Once a queen is mated and the beekeeper observes the laying pattern, the queen will be removed, caged and sold. The mating nuc will receive another queen cell or virgin queen and the process will repeat. Apiary {{bee-stub