> I wrote yesterday that the young cape BEE lays fertilized eggs nutil
> she is mated and then after that can lay both hap and dip eggs.
> Ooops - I meant the young unmated cape queen bee. We know workers
> just lay fertilized eggs for capensis, and sometimes a few haploids
> as well, but wrkers cannot mate.

No, unless i am getting confused this still has the same missuse of
fertilised for diploid etc as before. If a worker cannot mate, and so
is always a VIRGIN, how can it lay mainly fertilised eggs, and how
can the VIRGIN queen lay fertilised eggs? That is from where
does the sperm come from for fertilisation?.
 I still think this means thelytokous diploid eggs (in place of
fertilised) are laid by workers and young virgin queen bees, which
develop into matrilineal (clonal) diploid females. The mechanism of
thelytoky may fail (or is it under control? i dont know, but it would
be of great interest if anyone knows) resulting in haploid eggs that
develop as drones (male) occasionally being laid by the
workers.
 Once the queen bee is mated she lays fertilised diploid
(biparental diploid workers / queens [females]) and unfertilised
haploid (matrilineal haploid drones [male]) eggs. Thus mating (and
some aspects of aging) essentially switches off the method of
producing daughters without mating (terminal polecell nuclei fusion)
in the queen bee (but not the workers) and reverts her to "sexual
reproduction" (arrhenotoky).

However, if i have understood this correctly, herein lies the
potential interest in A. m. capensis. "Colonies" potentially have the
advantages of both thelytoky (rapid clonal expansion of currently
advantageous gene combinations without having to be reliant on other
males, or production of males rather then females, so queens and
their associated reproductively active (clonal) daughter workers can
rapidly reproduce compared to "sexual" species{all other things not
being limited]; whilst maintaining the advantages of sexual
reproduction (recombination, gene flow) to allow new genotype
combinations and thus a buffer against changing environment (that is
the  fitness of any given gene combination). This is in some ways
(simplistically) analagous to the cyclical parthenogenesis seen in
many gall wasps (Cynipidae). The interest may then be after the queen
has mated and produces daughters (workers) of a different genetic
relatedness (depending upon the drone(s) she mated with and
recombination), which workers will allow/be allowed to
parthenogenetically reproduce workers and/or queens. That is the
genetic conflict over the control of reproduction  involving
inter-worker and inter-queen conflicts may well be more complex than
in A. mellifera and other sexual eusocial insects.
Cheers
 Rob
Robert Butcher,
Evolutionary and Ecological Entomology Unit,
Department of Biological Sciences,
Dundee University,
Dundee, DD1 4HN,
Tayside, Scotland,
UK.
Work Phone:- 01382-344291 (Office), 01382-344756 (Lab).
Fax:- 01382-344864
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