Bee genetics are interesting. The males only have one set of genes rather
than two, and the females have two sets. Drones get half their mother's
genes, coming from an unfertilised egg. Females get all their father's
genes, and half the mother's. So bees with the same father share on average
75% of their genetic material.
It sounds likely that subsequent generations will go dark. It'll be
interesting to see how quickly.
Dorothy
On Thu, 15 Jul 2021, 19:43 Oxnatbees, <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
What clear photos of this phenomenon.
I had a close look at these photos to see what I could learn. I didn't see
the queen but I noticed 2 bees with somewhat frayed tips to their wings.
No, not varroa damage, which is much more severe - it means they're old.
Both were yellow bees. A very small sample size, but if all the yellow ones
are old (came with the swarm 6 weeks ago, about the lifespan of a hard
working adult worker) perhaps you are about to see a colour shift as they
die off and the new darker generation dominates...?
One study of disease & pest resistance concluded the most robust colonies
were where the queen had mated with an enormous number of drones, >20,
"hyperpolyandry".
Paul
On Thu, 15 Jul 2021, 18:15 Gilliane Sills, <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Six weeks ago, I hived a cast from Jane and I've taken photos inside the
hive, one ten days ago and one today. Both photos show bees of
strikingly different colours: they're all stripey and some are quite
golden and some quite dark. Jane tells me that the bees in her hive are
mainly golden in colour, so the dark bees presumably get their colouring
from the drones the queen mated with. The bees in my other hive are
generally dark and I guess drones from that hive could well have been in
the congregation that the virgin queen flew to. And presumably she
would have mated with drones from other colonies too. I knew in theory
that there would be lots of half-sisters in a colony, but I found it
really interesting to see this in practice.
Gilliane
--
from Gilliane Sills
The Map House
Vernon Avenue
Oxford
OX2 9AU
01865 721644
