Different coloured bees in one hive

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BeeNice

House Bee
Joined
Jun 7, 2010
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Location
Sheffield
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
4 now
Sat for a while watching the bees coming and going and noticed the vast differents in the colour (patterns) of the bees, some where wasp like (not wasps) but more yellow and black while others are mainly black. These all come from the same queen (no extra brood frames from a different hive). Question: once the queen has mated and carries the sperm does she then produce different patterned bees from the different guys she has been with when laying the eggs? Just a thought.
Steven
 
If they were different drones, offspring would be different. Haploid and diploid, genetics, biodiversity, et etc.

RAB
 
Bee variation

Since the queen mates with >10 drones you have the possibility of this many variants within a colony. Likewise, any daughter Queens produced by her will display similar variation.

If you really want to maintain a particular characteristic in your bees you either need to AI your Queens OR use a good inbred queen who has undergone "controlled' mating or AI to produce daughters (cheap, open mated) to start colonies for drone production only. Loads of these will swamp your apiary and environs and maximise your chance of getting offspring you want. as drones are haploid it doesn't matter who their mum mated with!
 
Since the queen mates with >10 drones you have the possibility of this many variants within a colony. Likewise, any daughter Queens produced by her will display similar variation.

As you say, there can be different coloured workers from the same queen. But I've noticed quite a few black workers in colonies which are headed by new Hawaain queens (most of the workers are very orange). Since these queens are already mated with Hawaiin (how do you spell it?) drones, they should all be the same colour. I have some black colonies, and I suspect there is quite a lot of robbing and drifting going on in my apiary, and this may be partly because they are too crowded. I am moving some to a new site this week.
 
I have a new colony (ex swarm) with some yellow workers and some all jet black workers and some brown workers...

"Exotic" seems a good description :)
 
I have a colony made up of the rump of 5 mini nucs plus introduced Queen :D

The colours vary but they'll be gone in a couple of weeks , the bees coming through are fairy evenly coloured I can tell by the increased amount of same !

John Wilkinson
 
Since the queen mates with >10 drones you have the possibility of this many variants within a colony. Likewise, any daughter Queens produced by her will display similar variation.

As you say, there can be different coloured workers from the same queen. But I've noticed quite a few black workers in colonies which are headed by new Hawaain queens (most of the workers are very orange). Since these queens are already mated with Hawaiin (how do you spell it?) drones, they should all be the same colour. I have some black colonies, and I suspect there is quite a lot of robbing and drifting going on in my apiary, and this may be partly because they are too crowded. I am moving some to a new site this week.
I plan to flood the area with drones as all of my hives have very gentle bees, even the swarm hive I caught earlier in this year. I also plan to expand my apiary so having good drones around can't be bad. I think it's spelt 'ha-y-ee-n'!!!
Regards
Steven
 
Could the queen using different drone's sperm in be the reason for a colony turning manic? (When no other reason is apparent)
 

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