As in other insects, males of most Apis species do not transfer their sperm directly to the spermatheca, but ejaculate them into the female’s sexual tract, the bursa copulatrix Since the total volume of all ejaculates is much larger than the volume of the bursa copulatrix, ejaculates get transferred to the lateral oviducts by contractions of the bursa The actual sperm storage process lasts for about 40 hours after mating (Woyke, 1983), during which most of the previously acquired sperm gets lost as it flows back into the bursa copulatrix to be eventually expelled through the vagina In Apis mellifera, the lateral oviducts of a queen contain about 200 million sperm after a mating flight (see references in Winston, 1991). However, only about 4.7 million of these get stored in the spermatheca, which means that only around 2.5% of the sperm acquired during the nuptial flight(s) gets stored. Extreme sperm dumping is not only known from A. mellifera but also for A. dorsata (Oldroyd et al., 1996) and must also occur in A. koschnevnikovi and A. cerana, because also in these species females acquire much more sperm than is required to fill the spermatheca This enormous loss of sperm during the sperm storage process has puzzled researchers ... the "genotype scrambling" hypothesis can in fact explain the excessive sperm intake and sperm dumping of Apis queens. One important reason for genotype collecting is that the queen has insufficient information about her mates and insufficient time to discriminate among them Boris, B. A. E. R. (2005). Sexual selection in Apis bees. Apidologie, 36, 187-200. *********************************************** 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