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Date: | Mon, 3 Jun 1996 19:53:02 EDT |
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A question was recently asked about whether bees move eggs and or
larvae. Mark Winston and I once did a study in which we made
colonies of Africanized bees queenless, then followed all events
related to queen rearing and swarming. After becoming queenless, the
bees constructed queen cups that were empty; following that either
eggs or larvae (Mark would have the details) appeared in the cells
and were reared into queens. Since the queen had been removed and
females (queens) were reared, it is logical to assume that the eggs
were moved by the bees.
The second situation we have seen several times, in which queen
cells are produced in honey supers above a queen excluder. In these
cases all other brood was contained below the queen excluder, so I am
fairly certain that the queen did not lay the eggs in the queen cells
herself. Again it is most likely that workers moved the eggs/larvae
up into the cells.
It seems virtually impossible to imagine that bees would steal
eggs or larvae from other colonies.
There is another possibility to explain the queenless colony that
got a new queen. It is well known that worker bees can lay eggs, but
usually these are haploid (unfertilized) and develop into drones.
One bee race, the Cape honey bee (A. mellifera capensis) is notorious
for having workers that lay diploid eggs (with two sets of
chromosomes). The number of chromosomes gets halved in the formation
of the egg, but then a polar body with one set of chromosomes fuses
with the egg nucleus to form a diploid nucleus that is analagous to a
fertilized egg, and the bees can rear females from these. It turns
out this physiological adaptation is present at low frequency in
other bee races. I believe it was W.C. Roberts or O. Mackensen
discovered that 1-2% of colonies of other bee races, in the absence
of brood from which to rear a queen, would still eventually become
queen-right, apparently through the production of diploid worker eggs.
Hope this may clarify the situation somewhat.
Dr. Gard W. Otis
Dept. of Environmental Biology
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario
Canada N1G 2W1
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