Interesting Article about Drones

[Newbee]

http://io9.com/some-worker-bees-are-secretly-sexual-double-agents-1702972288

As an admitted newbie, I did not know this? Interesting.

- K

[Ray]

Thanks for the link Newbee
Last line quote:
Note: Due to a number of mix-ups, this piece had to be extensively re-worked. Sorry, guys.

I think his rework needs rework   

[Newbee]

LOL!
Yeah, that site's a bit odd... I find lots of interesting bits to help pass the time, but the reporting quality is... about what my 12-year old could do!  Some of the writing is pretty liberal too. I think sometimes I just read that site to get myself worked up! LOL! 

Regardless, I had heard of birds placing eggs in someone else's nest (intra-species as well), and some reptiles do it, but I had no idea that a laying-drone would sneak into another hive and deposit a few egg's? How does that happen? I mean, how do you get a drone that can lay eggs? And what's the benefit to the drone (there's no genetic material mixing?) Wouldn't the drone have had to be reared as a queen (royal jelly for 15-days or something during gestation, right?), and then been inseminated by another drone, in order to produce viable egg's? Or can drones lay viable egg's w/o being a queen (can they be viable w/o inseminating the drone?) I'm hung up here on the whole sexual-propagation... I'm familiar w/ some organisms that can propagate asexually from my time in the SW Aquarium hobby, but I didn't think bee's were like that?

Fascinating stuff these little buggers. I think that's what draws me to this hobby.

Thanks Ray.

- K

[Ray]

The article starts out about bumble bees. They belong to a totally different genus, so I'm not sure how much of that applies to honey bees. I think it is a distinct possibility, a way for a colony to increase it's genetic foot print. 

[Lburou]

Apis Mellifera does not have drones that can act this way, but this report about bumble bees is interesting.  One can see this characteristic provides for a wider expression of genes (a good thing).

The techniques honey bees use for usurpation involve workers that invade another colony and make way for their queen to come in when the old queen is killed.  Apis mellifera capensis, using thelytoky, does this usurpation as a way of life.  So-called Africanized bees usurp in the process of expanding their range, but its more blatant than the gradual takeover of the Capensis bees.  Other Apis Mellifera bees have been reported to usurp another colony too, again, without thelytoky or drones laying eggs.  :-)

P.S.  The Capensis honey bee has workers with the unique capability to lay diploid eggs.

They are unique among honey bee subspecies because workers can lay diploid, female eggs, by means of thelytoky, while workers of other subspecies (and, in fact, unmated females of virtually all other eusocial insects) can only lay haploid, male eggs.

[Newbee]

Thanks Lee, that's fascinating stuff!

Google found this for me from David Cushman:

"Beekeeping practices inadvertently select against thelytoky. For example, swarming and supersedure can be minimized through various management techniques, and thus the possibility of a colony becoming queenless due to the loss of a virgin queen can be reduced. If colonies lose their queens and do not have brood to produce replacements, the queens often are replaced with new ones by beekeepers. Hence, there is no selective pressure for thelytoky in colonies managed in this manner. Conversely, the conditions under which the LUS strain was derived may have inadvertently selected for thelytoky. Virgin queens introduced into broodless colonies during the winter may not have been accepted by the workers in some cases, while in others the queens may not have mated or were lost on mating flights. Some of the colonies that survived may have done so because they requeened themselves with brood from laying workers. The winter requeening procedure was repeated annually using queens produced from brood of colonies that survived the previous year's winter requeening. If thelytoky was originally at a low frequency in the LUS strain at the beginning of the breeding program, the frequency possibly was increased because of continued selection followed by the production of new queens from brood of the survivors."

http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/thelytoky.html

- K