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Similar policing rates of eggs laid by virgin and mated honey-bee queens

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Abstract

Worker-policing is a well-documented mechanism that maintains functional worker sterility in queenright honey-bee colonies. Unknown, however, is the source of the egg-marking signal that is thought to be produced by the queen and used by policing workers to discriminate between queen- and worker-laid eggs. Here we investigate whether mating is necessary for the queen to produce the egg-marking signal. We compare the removal rate of eggs laid by virgin queens and compare this rate with that of eggs laid by mated queens. Our results show that mating does not affect the acceptability of eggs, suggesting that physiological changes linked to the act of mating do not play a role in the production of the queen’s egg-marking signal.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Michael Duncan for his beekeeping assistance, Frank Malfroy for selling us queens at short notice, and the School of Biological Sciences for the use of the Crommelin Biological Research Station. Financial support was obtained from Australian Research Council grants to M.B. and B.P.O.

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  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, A12, 2006, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Madeleine Beekman, Caroline G. Martin & Benjamin P. Oldroyd

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  1. Madeleine Beekman
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  2. Caroline G. Martin
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  3. Benjamin P. Oldroyd
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Correspondence to Madeleine Beekman.

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Beekman, M., Martin, C.G. & Oldroyd, B.P. Similar policing rates of eggs laid by virgin and mated honey-bee queens. Naturwissenschaften 91, 598–601 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-004-0576-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-004-0576-y

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