Hi Murray

> their 
> colouration was across the same range and broadly in proportion to the 
> workers in the colony. If dark bees were uncommon in the hive you only 
> got a few dark virgins, if on the other there were a preponderance of 
> dark workers you got a preponderance of dark virgins. This is not 
> consistent with a rare patriline being selected.

The selection has to do much more with the patriline of the worker 
making the selection being close to, or identical to, the larvae.

I know work on this was carried out at LASI Sheffield during 1998-2000, 
but in searching for the paper to quote, I came up with a blank, however 
during my search I did find a 1943 paper by Otto Mackenson entitled 'The 
Occurrence of Parthenogenetic Females in Some Strains of Honey Bees' 
(Journal of Economic Entomology 36: (3):465, which was related to a 
previous thread on Thelytoky, that of course does not impact on the 
current thread, but at least its title can now be searched for by those 
that were interested.

-- 
Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://melliferabees.net Email: [log in to unmask]
Short FallBack M/c, Build 7.21/2.01
Son of ORAC M/c, Build 5.o1/2.o1

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