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Genetic diversity affects colony survivorship in commercial honey bee colonies

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Abstract

Honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens mate with unusually high numbers of males (average of approximately 12 drones), although there is much variation among queens. One main consequence of such extreme polyandry is an increased diversity of worker genotypes within a colony, which has been shown empirically to confer significant adaptive advantages that result in higher colony productivity and survival. Moreover, honey bees are the primary insect pollinators used in modern commercial production agriculture, and their populations have been in decline worldwide. Here, we compare the mating frequencies of queens, and therefore, intracolony genetic diversity, in three commercial beekeeping operations to determine how they correlate with various measures of colony health and productivity, particularly the likelihood of queen supersedure and colony survival in functional, intensively managed beehives. We found the average effective paternity frequency (m e ) of this population of honey bee queens to be 13.6 ± 6.76, which was not significantly different between colonies that superseded their queen and those that did not. However, colonies that were less genetically diverse (headed by queens with m e  ≤ 7.0) were 2.86 times more likely to die by the end of the study when compared to colonies that were more genetically diverse (headed by queens with m e  > 7.0). The stark contrast in colony survival based on increased genetic diversity suggests that there are important tangible benefits of increased queen mating number in managed honey bees, although the exact mechanism(s) that govern these benefits have not been fully elucidated.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the three participating beekeepers for their assistance in this project as well as Michael Andree, Karen Roccasacca, Linda Wertz, and Nishit Patel and Nathan Rice for help in collecting and processing samples. We would like to thank Joel Caren, John Harman, Deborah Delaney, Winnie Lee, Flora Lee, Mithun Patel, and Matt Mayer for their help in DNA extractions and PCR analyses. This study was supported by the National Research Initiative of the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, grant number 2007–02281, USDA-ARS as well as by grants from the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the National Honey Board.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7613, Raleigh, NC, 27695-7613, USA

    David R. Tarpy

  2. Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, 3136 Plant Sciences Building, College Park, MD, 20742-4454, USA

    Dennis vanEngelsdorp

  3. USDA–ARS Bee Research Laboratory, Bldg. 306 BARC-E, Beltsville, MD, 20705, USA

    Jeffrey S. Pettis

Authors
  1. David R. Tarpy
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  2. Dennis vanEngelsdorp
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  3. Jeffrey S. Pettis
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Correspondence to David R. Tarpy.

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Communicated by: Sven Thatje

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Tarpy, D.R., vanEngelsdorp, D. & Pettis, J.S. Genetic diversity affects colony survivorship in commercial honey bee colonies. Naturwissenschaften 100, 723–728 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-013-1065-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-013-1065-y

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