Strength surpasses relatedness-queen larva selection in honeybees.

ABSTRACT: Nepotism was initially theoretically predicted and sometimes found to trigger the selection of specific larvae to be reared as queens in the honeybee Apis mellifera. Although the importance of selecting the next queen for a colony indicates that it should not occur at random, nepotism is increasingly considered unlikely in eusocial insect societies. Different prenatal maternal supplies of embryos have been found to impact fitness in many other species and therefore could be a possible trigger underlying the likelihood of being raised as a queen. We offered related or unrelated larvae from six colonies originating from eggs of different weights for emergency queen rearing in queenless units with worker bees from these six colonies. We showed that nurses did not significantly prefer related

SUBMITTER: Al-Kahtani SN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8341480 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature