News from Chronicle Online
Queen bees are not just being promiscuous, they are boosting the
health of the hive, study finds
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Dec06/promiscuou
s.queens.sl.html
Dec. 8, 2006
By Susan Lang
ssl4@cornell.edu
Though promiscuity may be risky behavior for humans, it's healthy for
honeybees: Queen honeybees who indulge in sexual surfeits with
multiple drones produce more disease-resistant colonies than
monogamous monarchs.
According to a new Cornell study published in the Jan. 7 issue of the
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, the curious promiscuity
of queen honeybees has long perplexed apiculturists, especially since
seeking out multiple mates takes more time and energy and puts the
queens at greater peril for predator attacks.
"Even though just one male provides all the sperm that a queen needs
for the rest of her life, queen honeybees go out on mating flights
and obtain sperm from a dozen or more males," said lead author Thomas
Seeley, Cornell professor of biology and chair of the Department of
Neurobiology and Behavior.
Seeley and David Tarpy of North Carolina State University tested the
leading hypothesis that queens' promiscuity improves colony disease
resistance by boosting the genetic diversity of their offspring, the
worker bees. "This required a particularly nasty experiment, in which
we inoculated colonies with the most virulent disease of honeybees
that is known, the dreaded American foulbrood disease," said Seeley.
Specifically, Tarpy inseminated honeybee queens (Apis mellifera) with
sperm from either a single drone or from 10 drones. Seeley then
sprayed the brood colonies of the resulting 49 colonies (24 from
"multiple-mate" queens and 25 from singly mated queens) with water
tainted with spores of the highly virulent bacterium that infects bee
larvae and causes the disease American Foulbrood.
Sure enough, the more genetically diverse colonies derived from
multiple fathers were significantly less affected by the disease
several months later.
The findings have implications for beekeepers, whose honeybees bring
revenues of about $20 billion a year in the United States for
pollinating services. Beekeepers could boost the health of their
colonies, say the researchers, by promoting the queens' promiscuity
by providing plentiful drones where queens are mating.
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