> At the same time, we have seen that crossing African and European bees does not generally result in a more manageable bees, since the aggressive traits appear to dominate. 


The question being raised is where is the "dominance" originating from, the maternal line or paternal line or both.  The study cited in the origin of this thread is suggesting the possibility that the DNA of drones may play a more important role in inherited defensive behavior than we currently acknowledge. The authors offer a few theories around how the gene expression of the queen may tend toward less defensive behavior while drone allies may reverse that tendency. 

But the study doesn't really inform beekeepers much, even if the theories are proven correct, because we already know that European queens crossed with Africanized drones generally produce defensive colonies.  


> The queen bee mates with multiple drones and most workers are only half sisters. So one possible interpretation of our results is that major defensive behavior alleles in bees are methylated when inherited from the mother to reduce the costs associated with a high degree of defensive behavior in the colony, but the expression of the paternal alleles results in progeny workers and queens that exhibit behavior that promotes the spread of these alleles.

https://doi.org/10.1093/jhered/esi038



Note: Folks interested in this kind of research may also find this study, (DOI: 10.1111/mec.15080) cited earlier by Jay Evans and more recently by Dewey Caron,  involving drone pupa and suppressed varroa reproduction interesting.    

Bill Hesbach
Cheshire CT

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