Cryptic "royal" subfamilies in honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies.

ABSTRACT: During emergency queen rearing, worker honey bees (Apis mellifera) select several otherwise worker-destined larvae to instead rear as candidates to replace their dead or failing queen. This choice is crucial as the queen is the sole reproductive in the colony and her quality is essential to its success. Because honey bee queens mate with and store sperm from multiple drones, emergency queen selection presents workers with an opportunity to increase fitness by selecting full- (0.75 relatedness), rather than half- (0.25 relatedness), sisters as new queen candidates. Through patriline analysis of colonies along with large numbers of emergency queens reared by each we affirm the purported "royal" patriline theory that, instead of competing nepotistically, workers exhibit bias towards selecting

SUBMITTER: Withrow JM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6040692 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature