Info on drone production

Honeybee colonies refrain from producing drones until the colony has a sufficiently large population of adult workers. The population of adult workers in a colony is naturally low following a swarming event, and swarms that establish new colonies prevent early drone production by not constructing drone comb (the wax cells in which drones are reared) until an average of 22 days after establishment (Lee and Winston, 1985). 

Once established, larger swarms build a greater proportion of drone cells more quickly than do smaller swarms, indicating a strong effect of swarm size on drone comb investment (Henderson, 1991). In addition, small swarms that are composed of fewer than 10,000 workers sometimes build little or no drone comb at all, indicating that small colonies limit their investment in drones until they grow larger (Lee and Winston, 1985). 

As small colonies increase their production of brood, they also increase the proportion of drone brood (Free and Williams, 1975). However, once colonies reach a large size (more than 12,000 adult workers), there does not appear to be any relationship between the number of workers reared and the percentage of drone brood in the colony (Page and Metcalf, 1984). Colonies therefore reach an upper limit in their investment in drones.   

The tendency of workers to eliminate males likely is influenced by colony food conditions, but how food conditions affect the relative rates of cannibalism for drone and worker larvae awaits future study. The tendency of workers to consume worker larvae increases during periods of poor food availability (Schmickl and Crailsheim, 2001). 

Interestingly, under poor colony food conditions, the workers preferentially consumed younger (less than 3 days old) rather than older (4–5 days) larvae and also preferentially withheld nursing from the younger larvae … In general, the circumstances under which workers cannibalize larvae are poorly understood.  

SEE:
"Honeybee colony drone production and maintenance in accordance with environmental factors: an interplay of queen and worker decisions"
Katie Boes, Insect. Soc. (2010) 57:1–9

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Access BEE-L directly at:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L