ENY 4592 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Matrilineality, Gentleness, Honey Flow
19 Apr 2019
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Importance of the queen: her egg laying performace, genetics she confers to her progeny, non genetic effects on workers, her productive longevity, requeening success. Queen egg- laying performace: 1500 fertilized eggs per day mid season, 175,000-200,000 eggs annually, stores enough sperm for four years of egg laying. Farrar"s principle: number of bees in colony is directly proportional to the amount of honey produced. Conferred genetics: traits present in queen that you want in workers, drone + queen = worker bees. You want to know your queen and the drone inseminating her: mating behavior: a virgin queen leaves the colony to go on mating flight 10- 14 days of her life: queens mate with 17 drones on average, the sperm she collects will be used the rest of her life. Semen collected in spermatheca: queen can control fertilization of egg. Heritable traits: honey production, hygienic behavior, vsh varroa senstivie hygeine, gentleness, pollen hoarding, pollen preference.
