Regulation of sex ratio in social insects has been widely studied because it bears special importance to the evolution of social behaviour. Optimal colony sex ratio is often a compromise between workers and the queen because of their genetic asymmetry. Honey bees offer an unique system for studying sex ratio control, because of haplodiploidy sex determination and the fact that the queen lays unfertilised eggs only in larger, drone-typed, cells which develop into males, while fertilised eggs are laid into smaller cells which become females workers. The control of fertilisation or non-fertilisation based on cell type is very close to, if not actually, 100% accurate. In this study we show that honey bee queens have the remarkable ability to override this highly stereotyped behavioural program: that they can "deliberately" lay fertilised eggs in the larger, drone-sized cells, to manipulate the sex ratio when the circumstances so require.
Species 1: Hymenoptera Apidae Apis mellifera (honey bee)
Keywords: sex ratio, queen control
Back to Ten-Minute Papers, Section Cb. Apiculture and Social Insects
Back to Ten-Minute Papers, Section Ca, Cb, Cc, Cd, Ce, and Cf
Back to The 2003 ESA Annual Meeting and Exhibition