BEE-L Archives

Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

BEE-L@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 2 Aug 2018 23:23:59 -0400
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (17 lines)
> Rather, she releases a quantity of semen which has a multitude of sperms, of which a dozen or more may enter the egg.

> Not according to:  Sperm use economy of honeybee (Apis mellifera) queens

Fair enough, but they acknowledge that prior estimates were much higher. They state

> Counting the number of sperm in spermathecae of queens at different ages, and estimating the approximate numbers of eggs queens had laid at that point, allowed calculations of sperm usage by queens, but these values were highly variable ranging from 3 to 100 sperm per fertilization. To overcome the limitations of these early approaches, we developed a novel method to directly count the number of sperm on freshly laid eggs ...

Personally, I have no idea, I am going on what others have observed. 

PLB

             ***********************************************
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

ATOM RSS1 RSS2