100 td Welcome to the Forum!!!
Great link. Excellent reading and information I have never seen or heard of before.. Is this serious?
Of the 18 colonies of LUS tested for thelytoky, 55.6% reared worker brood from the eggs of laying workers, and 50% reared queens. Queens from the brood of laying workers emerged only in the 4-5 frame nucleus colonies, and never in the observation hives. In the nucleus colonies, sometimes a patch of worker brood was produced and the queen cell was constructed within that patch (Fig 1.). A queen cell positioned among worker brood is commonly seen in a colony that is requeening itself in the conventional manner using brood from the previous queen. However, some queen cells from thelytokous LUS colonies were located at the very top of the frame. Neither CP or cd constructed queen cups in this region. A queen produced from laying worker eggs successfully mated and produced worker and drone brood. However, eight of the nine queens produced from workers’ brood either did not return to the hive after a mating flight, or were critically injured during artificial insemination.
LUS were selected from commercial European honey bee stock, indicating that thelytoky may exist as part of the overall Apis mellifera gene pool. However, reports indicate that in managed colonies thelytoky is expressed at a very low frequency (Mackensen 1943). This may be because beekeeping practices inadvertently select against thelytoky. For example, swarming and supercedure 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.
We stopped finding eggs in the colonies once the queen emerged and was present in the hive. The colony whose queen successfully mated, behaved like any other colony with a new queen. After mating the queen began laying worker brood which was cared for by the adult workers in the colony.
It looks to me like the odds are against this happening, especially in our managed hives, but it is information I have never seen or read about. THANKS for the link!!!
Scott
