Hello David & all,

> The individual sperm remain genetically true to the drone that
> issued them, but the storage within the queen's spermatheca is
> a mixture, however it is not a homogeneous mixture, but has
> granular clumps of identical sperm. 

Moreover, it seems that some kind of competition among sperms may
exist inside the spermatheca, at least when AHB sperm is present:
<http://www.edpsciences.org/articles/apido/abs/2003/02/M3207/M3207.html>

> All drone eggs laid in the hive will be genetic clones of the
> queen

I wouldn't choose "clone" to express the genetical relationship
between queen and drone, because this word can easily lead someone to
a misunderstanding. I'm not sure if the same occurs in other parts of
the world, but at least in Brazil, a lot of people believe that all
drones of the same queen are genetically identical. In fact, each
drone just inherits half of his mother's genes, but they are
"carried" by a random set of chromosomes, some (or all) of them
having been "crossed over" with their correspondent pairs during
meiosis, and that gives the queen a very low probability to generate
two identical drones along her life.

Best regards.

João Campos
Porto Alegre - Brazil





	



	
		
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