Worker layers and swollen ovaries

[Finman]

.
Old saga is that you may shake worker layer colony to some distance and then laying workers cannot fly to the hive. And the worker queen does not like real queen and kills it.

---- This is all imagination and revieled by Sheffiels University.


It is rare, but it happens, that in queen right colonies some workers may lay eggs. These eggs will be eaten by other bees inside 24 hours. That phenomenom is called "worker policing". I was first found from swaps and then researchers got into their mind, does it exist in honey bee? And it did, and in many others bee like colonies.

"Honey bee workers are often referred to as sterile.
They are not. Each possesses two ovaries and can lay
viable eggs if her ovaries are activated. (Almost all the
workers, approximately 99.98%, in a queenright colony
have non-active ovaries which are thread like in
appearance. But the occasional worker has activated
ovaries containing full-sized eggs. In a queenless colony
with laying workers up to approximately 50% of the
workers have activated ovaries.) Because workers cannot
mate they can only lay unfertilized eggs."

See more
http://www.lasi.group.shef.ac.uk/aps323/ConflictInBeeHive.pdf

.

 

[Finman]

.
Worker laying developes in a hopelessly queenless colonies

Abstract:
In queenright colonies of Apis mellifera, worker policing normally eliminates worker-laid eggs thereby preventing worker reproduction.

However, in queenless colonies that have failed to rear a replacement queen, worker reproduction is normal. Worker policing is switched off, many workers have active ovaries and lay eggs, and the colony rears a last batch of male brood before dying out. Here we report a colony which, when hopelessly queenless, did not stop policing although a high proportion of workers had active ovaries (12.6%) and many eggs were laid. However, all these eggs and also worker-laid eggs transferred from another colony were policed. This unusual pattern was repeated eight weeks later by a second queenless colony made using worker bees from the same mother colony, which strongly suggests genetic determination.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/40/2004/00000051/00000002/art00003

 

[Finman]

Research article
Worker policing in the common wasp Vespula vulgaris is not aimed at
improving colony hygiene
H. Helanter1*, A. Tofilski2, T. Wenseleers3 and F.L.W. Ratnieks4

1 Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 65, FI-00014, Finland


Published Online First 9 November 2006

"Here we test this hypothesis for the
common wasp Vespula vulgaris, a species with highly
effective worker policing.We show that worker-laid eggs
from queenless colonies have a lower hatch rate (68%)
than queen-laid eggs (82%). Analysis of egg laying rates
of queens and workers, however, shows that the difference
is not big enough to explain the apparent absence of
adult worker-derived males in this species."

 

[Finman]

.
Reproductive conflict in bumblebees and the evolution of worker policing.

Zanette LR, Miller SD, Faria CM, Almond EJ, Huggins TJ, Jordan WC, Bourke AF.


Source

School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.  [email protected]


Abstract


Worker policing ......We tested this hypothesis by investigating conflict over male parentage in the primitively eusocial, monandrous bumblebee, Bombus terrestris. Using observations, experiments, and microsatellite genotyping,
we found that: (a) worker- but not queen-laid male eggs are nearly all eaten (by queens, reproductive, and nonreproductive workers) soon after being laid, so accounting for low observed frequencies of larval and adult worker-produced males; (b) queen- and worker-laid male eggs have equal viabilities; (c) workers discriminate between queen- and worker-laid eggs using cues on eggs and egg cells that almost certainly originate from queens. The cooccurrence in B. terrestris of these three key elements of "classical" worker policing as found in the highly eusocial, polyandrous honeybees provides novel support for the hypothesis that worker policing can originate in the absence of relatedness differences maintaining it. Worker policing in B. terrestris almost certainly arose via reproductive competition among workers, that is, as "selfish" policing.

 

[Finman]

.

Worker policing and worker reproduction in Apis cerana.



Oldroyd, Benjamin P, Halling, Luke A, Good, Gregory, Wattanachaiyingcharoen, Wandee, Barron, Andrew B, Nanork, Piyamas, Wongsiri, Siriwat and Ratnieks, Francis L (2001) Worker policing and worker reproduction in Apis cerana. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 50 (4). pp. 371-377. ISSN 0340-5443
Full text not available from this repository.
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s002650100376

Abstract


Workers of the Asian hive bee, Apis cerana, are shown to have relatively high rates of worker ovary activation. In colonies with an active queen and brood nest, 1-5% of workers have eggs in their ovarioles. When A. cerana colonies are dequeened, workers rapidly activate their ovaries. After 4 days 15% have activated ovaries and after 6 days, 40%.

A cerana police worker-laid eggs in the same way that A. florea and A. mellifera do, but are perhaps slightly more tolerant of worker-laid eggs than the other species.

Nevertheless, no worker's sons were detected in a sample of 652 pupal males sampled from 4 queenright colonies. A cerana continue to police worker-laid eggs, even after worker oviposition has commenced in a queenless colony.

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=359201

 

[Finman]

.
Workers of Cape honeybee, Apis mellifera capensis and Apis mellifera scutella are able to lay normal queens

Abstract

In the Cape honeybee, Apis mellifera capensis, workers lay diploid (female) eggs via thelytoky. In other A. mellifera subspecies, workers lay haploid (male) eggs via arrhenotoky. When thelytokous worker reproduction occurs, worker policing has no relatedness benefit because workers are equally related to their sister workers' clonal offspring and their mother queen's female offspring. We studied worker policing in A. m. capensis and in the arrhenotokous African honeybee A. m. scutellata by quantifying the removal rates of worker-laid and queen-laid eggs. Discriminator colonies of both subspecies policed worker-laid eggs of both their own and the other subspecies. The occurrence of worker policing, despite the lack of relatedness benefit, in A. m. capensis strongly suggests that worker reproduction is costly to the colony and that policing is maintained because it enhances colony efficiency. In addition, because both subspecies policed each others eggs, it is probable that the mechanism used in thelytokous A. m. capensis to discriminate between queen-laid and worker-laid eggs is the same as in arrhenotokous A. m. scutellata.

http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/14/3/347.full

 

[Finman]

.

True Allien story: Cape honeybee worker may enter to scutellata hive and lays eggs there. It is a parasite bee.

Wikipedia

The African honey bee (Apis mellifera scutellata) is a subspecies of the Western honey bee. It is native to central and southern Africa, though at the southern extreme it is replaced by the Cape honey bee (Apis mellifera capensis).[1]

This subspecies has been determined to constitute one part of the ancestry of the Africanized bees (also known as "killer bees") spreading through America.

The African bee is being threatened by the introduction of the Cape honey bee into northern South Africa. If a female worker from a Cape honey bee colony enters an African bee nest, she is not attacked, partly due to her resemblance to the African bee queen. Now independent from her own colony, she may begin laying eggs, and since A. m. capensis workers are capable of parthenogenetic reproduction, they will hatch as "clones" of herself, which will also lay eggs. As a result the parasitic A. m. capensis workers increase in number within a host colony. This leads to the death of the host colony on which they depend. An important factor causing the death of a colony seems to be the dwindling numbers of A. m. scutellata workers that perform foraging duties (A. m. capensis workers are greatly under-represented in the foraging force of an infected colony) owing to death of the queen, and, before queen death, competition for egg laying between A. m. capensis workers and the queen. When the colony dies, the capensis females will seek out a new host colony.[.

 

[Suzi Q]

All very interesting, thanks! Hope your leg is better Finman,

 

[Scutellator]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524821.900-anarchy-discovered-in-the-honeybee-hive.html

An old discovery, but still might be new for some of us. The idea of the anarchist bees is not new, it was known phenomenon for more than 150 years.

(Please note! I didn't know you are so easily to upset. Do not regard this as intent to offend you Finman. We often disagree, but that is the fun part about keeping bees. Nobody can know everythyng, so you must assume somethimes you could be wrong as well)

 

[boca]

I was busy this month and I neglected my mating nucs.
2 days ago I found one with laying workers. No larvae yet in the cells but full of eggs.
I distributed the combs to queenright families expecting that they will not tolerate worker laid eggs in worker combs. Today, to my disappointment, I found those eggs hatched and lavish in food.
The police must be on strike today (I am in Italy).

 

[Finman]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524821.900-anarchy-discovered-in-the-honeybee-hive.html


An old discovery, but still might be new for some of us. The idea of the anarchist bees is not new, it was known phenomenon for more than 150 years.

(Please note! I didn't know you are so easily to upset. Do not regard this as intent to offend you Finman. We often disagree, but that is the fun part about keeping bees. Nobody can know everythyng, so you must assume somethimes you could be wrong as well)

Known 150 years.... The therm anarchy was invented in those days, 1840. Romania was under government of Ottomans then. And someone noticed in Romania that bees are anarkists even if no such term was not used in Romania.

Scutellator, you must be an old chap. And good memory.

Anarchist bees..... What does it mean. A bee which think that laws are not needed.

.that New Scientist article is pure rubbish. Bees should be something else what they are?
.the story resembles the fairy tale of May the Bee, who introduced democracy into beehive.
.

 

[boca]

Known 150 years...

That is 152 now. you have replied to a two years old post.

 

[Dishmop]

That is 152 now. you have replied to a two years old post.

Googling too much does that to people....

 

[Finman]

That is 152 now. you have replied to a two years old post.

Oh boy. 15 or 150 . It is all the same.
You chould realize that it has happened never - why

Because bees have no law books.

And bees are not anarchist. What anarchist bee does in the hive?

Scutellator has those fairy tales much more.

 

[Finman]

Googling too much does that to people....

Googling Maya the Bee. Dishmop, it was cinema where you saw it. Remember?

 

[Finman]

.
Fairy tales continues still

I just looked David Cushman pages, how to handle worker layers: Carry the hive 100 yards and shake bees into lawn. Worker layers cannot fly.

I have done I once. It was about 52 years ago. Then I found out that when I put a larva frame into a worker layer hive, it stops laying.

Vain is work of university of Sheffield if the leading author does not know how to use new knowledge.

But in Romania it was understood during government of Ottomans 152.5 years ago.