A drowning man will clutch at a straw. The colony is lost without a queen. However, for the workers, the last chance to spread their genes, is through the males (unfertilized eggs). :)
thanks michal
When the queen is not in the colony, the workes spered their genes is throuph the males.the colony destroyed eventually. This is not a farce?In your opinion?
Dear Shahnaz,
Pro primo, I am not a honey bee specialist.
If the queen dies unexpectedly, the workers will raise emergency queens by switching worker bee larvae to a diet of royal jelly, a special food that turns female bee larvae into queen bees. These are the emergency queens.
Some options:
1. The emergency queen needs drones. However, generally queens copulate with many drones of various colonies.
2. The production of unfertilized eggs by laying worker bees may be a symptom of a failed behaviour for supplementing queens.
Dear Shahnaz
As Andeas, I am not a honey be specialist, but this is a classic example from behavioral ecology courses. Males are haploids, thus, they are produced from unfertilized eggs. Workers and queens are, in contrast, diploids and are produced from fertilized eggs. Common unfertle workers can manipulate male production by regulating the size of the cells where the queen will drop the egg (as queens "chose" between fertilized and unfertilized eggs in relation to cell size). This mechanism of sex ratio regulation depends, nevertheless, on the presence of a queen. Laying worker bees, in contrast, can produce unfertilized eggs (thus producing males) and will probably increase male production in the absence of a queen because they have a clear conflict of interest (in therms of fitness) with the queen and with other laying workers. They share 1/2 of their genes with their sons but only 1/4 with their brothers and with males produced by other laying workers (queens, in contrast, share 1/2 with their sons and 1/4 with the worker's soons) and queens coerce laying workers to produce their own sons by different ways. In the absence of a queen, thus, is logic that laying workers start to produce males in order to maximize their own fitness. So, I think the answer is not in an altruistic behavior in order to "save" the colony but in the selfish behavior of laying workers that will try to maximize their own fitness.
Simply put, worker honeybees do not mate and so have no sperm. When the queen, who has mated and has sperm, dies, the workers can start to develop their ovaries and produce eggs (the hormonal influence of the queen is lost). The eggs are then laid, but are not fertilized because of the lack of sperm. Unfertilized eggs develop into male (drone) bees, and this is also true of eggs that are laid by the queen and go unfertilized. These eggs are haploid. Diploid eggs usually develop into females (workers or queens). A drone producing, queenless, colony is doomed to die. But, by producing drones makes a last ditch attempt towards Darwinian fitness.
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