In a message dated 12/20/2012 2:58:42 P.M. Mountain Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
We know that it is true of A.m.m. The queens generally go into their
third
or fourth year (sometimes fifth) and the workers live longer thus giving
large crops from small populations (the extra lifespan is all extra
foraging
time).
I'd like to see a reference for this claim. We did work some years ago on
modeling honey bee population dynamics and longevity. The available
literature indicated that bees had a 'flight life' or more or less a fixed
number of kilometers that they could/would fly before they wore themselves out
and perished. For modeling, this worked out to looking at things like
weather and life-span. In peak summer foraging, where every day was sunny and
warm, bees would 'use' up their flight life in about 11 days. That's what
the research from Germany showed. The researcher marked bees, flew them to
feeding stations at different distance, tracked life-span against distance
flown. This data seemed to work here in US as well, based on our own
tests. And, I went into a lot of published studies on bee life-span, where the
authors didn't know about the German testing, and the average life-span
under good flight conditions more or less proved out.
In spring or fall, where one might have a good flight day, 2-3 days of
wet or cool, then one or more good flight days - the 'life-span' as we
modeled it, worked out to when the bees used up the cumulative number of hours
equivalent to the 11 day benchmark. It certainly seemed to work in our model
validations. Not exact, but far better than I'd have guessed.
So, my impression is that worker life-span is more a function of external
factors like weather, forage availability, nutritional quantity and
quality. I'd find it hard to separate out a genetic difference. Jerry
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