This studyuses siblinganalysis tomeasure theheritability inhoneybees,Apismellifera L., of characteristics that have been associated with resistance to the mite, Varroa jacobsoni Oudemans. Twenty-eight uniform colonies of bees were established on 13 May in Baton Rouge, LA, each with 1 kg of mite-infested bees and a queen. The 28 unrelated queens in these colonies were divided into 7 groups of 4 ...

Queen monogamy is ancestral among bees, ants, and wasps (Order Hymenoptera), and the close relatedness that it generates within colonies is considered key for the evolution of eusociality in these lineages. Paradoxically, queens of several eusocial species are extremely promiscuous, a derived behavior that decreases relatedness among workers and fitness gained from rearing siblings but benefits...

Juvenile hormone (JH) controls key events in the honey bee life cycle, viz. caste development and age polyethism. We quantified transcript abundance of 24 genes involved in the JH biosynthetic pathway in the corpora allata-corpora cardiaca (CA-CC) complex. The expression of six of these genes showing relatively high transcript abundance was contrasted with CA size, hemolymph JH titer, as well a...

In social insect colonies, recognition of nestmates, kinship, caste and reproductive status is crucial both for individuals and for the colony. The recognition cues used are thought to be chemical, with the hydrocarbons found on the cuticle of insects often cited as being particularly important. However, in honeybees (Apis mellifera) the role of cuticular hydrocarbons in nestmate recognition is...

Organisms adapt their behavior and physiology to environmental conditions through processes of phenotypic plasticity. In one well-studied example, the division of labor among worker honey bees involves a stereotyped yet plastic pattern of behavioral and physiological maturation. Early in life, workers perform brood care and other in-hive tasks and have large internal nutrient stores; later in l...

By using a functional genomics approach, we have identified a honey bee [Apis mellifera (Am)] odorant receptor (Or) for the queen substance 9-oxo-2-decenoic acid (9-ODA). Honey bees live in large eusocial colonies in which a single queen is responsible for reproduction, several thousand sterile female worker bees complete a myriad of tasks to maintain the colony, and several hundred male drones...

Varroa destructor is a worldwide ectoparasite of serious economic importance for beekeeping. Severe colony mortality is routine in parasitized European honey bees (EHB) colonies in Europe, Asia and North America. This study was carried out in Heredia, Costa Rica. The reproductive ability of varroa mites was determined approximately 240 h after cell sealing in worker brood from four Africanized ...

Veterinarians usually deal with different vertebrate species, species that do not differ greatly amongst themselves in their bodily functions but that do differ hugely from insects in their anatomy and morphology. Although the individual honey bee exhibits all essential bodily functions, it is unable to survive alone. It is one among thousands of individuals within a highly complex society: the...

Social insects have many defence mechanisms against pests and pathogens. One of these is hygienic behaviour, which has been studied in detail in the honey bee, Apis mellifera Hygienic honey bee workers remove dead and diseased larvae and pupae from sealed brood cells, thereby reducing disease transfer within the colony. Stingless bees, Meliponini, also rear broods in sealed cells. We investigat...

Unlike most animals studied so far in which the activity with no circadian rhythms is pathological or linked to deteriorating performance, worker bees and ants naturally care for their sibling brood around the clock with no apparent ill effects. Here, we tested whether bumble-bee queens that care alone for their first batch of offspring are also capable of a similar chronobiological plasticity....