Why are my queens a different colour from their worker sisters?

[Summerslease]

I've been raising my own queens for the first time this year, following a 2 queen system recommended by Ron Brown in one of his booklets. Essentially it's a form of artificial swarm forcing the remaining bees to raise emergency cells.

So far so good but the queens are a completely different colour from their sisters. They have a different colouration from any other bee in the hive. Could the increased royal jelly they are fed cause this, or is it caused by them being fertilised?

Does anyone know? Whatever the reason it makes them easier to find.

 

[For want of a better word]

My guess is it is what the queen's mother mated with, the level of introgression from imported foreign bees there are in your local area, and many other somewhat complex genetics !

 

[victor meldrew]

I've been raising my own queens for the first time this year, following a 2 queen system recommended by Ron Brown in one of his booklets. Essentially it's a form of artificial swarm forcing the remaining bees to raise emergency cells.

So far so good but the queens are a completely different colour from their sisters. They have a different colouration from any other bee in the hive. Could the increased royal jelly they are fed cause this, or is it caused by them being fertilised?

Does anyone know? Whatever the reason it makes them easier to find.

Because they are her daughters rather than her sisters ?
VM

 

[MuswellMetro]

Your worker bees show a wide colour mix of all black to yellow banded Italian type bees as HM has mated with a mix of drones and it is one of the yellow Worker eggs they have chosen to raise

i was quite surprised when I first saw my first Italian drone...really brown with orange brown hair

 

[Summerslease]

Thanks for the replies. It is more complex than I thought. Is there a geneticist in the house?

 

[drstitson]

"Because they are her daughters rather than her sisters ?"

only the ones that are produced in the hive AFTER she has mated.

OP - the key is that the workers are haploid and HM is diploid - so she has 2 sets of genes to their one and thus will display all the well known phenotypic effects of dominant and recessive genes whilst the workers will just display what their single copies code for.

 

[Erichalfbee]

No
Both Queen and Workers are diploid.
Drones are haploid

 

[masterBK]

Don't forget that the queen can express the same genes differently to workers (epigenetics) which is why she has no pollen baskets, toothed mandibles, more complex ovaries etc as well as different coloured banding patterns under discussion etc. Mediated to a certain extent by proteins (and the extra glucose?) in the royal jelly fed to her as a larvae (Royalactin discovered by a Japanese researcher Masaki Kamakura)

 

[oliver90owner]

Essentially it's a form of artificial swarm forcing the remaining bees to raise emergency cells.

Whatever it might be, I don't think A/S and emergency cells are synonymous.

 

[drstitson]

sorry - long weekend.