Comparative studies of mating and virus loads in multiple populations of the Eastern honey bee, Apis cerana

The mating biology of social insects has been subject to numerous studies because the queen mating pattern affects the colony kin structure and thus selective pressures on all individuals.  Moreover, multiple mating itself has been associated with colony fitness, mostly based on increasing colony genetic diversity.  However, little is known about the natural variation in mating behavior and biogeographic studies of this behavior are rare. Honey bees have particularly high mating frequencies but many of the species records are based on very limited sample sizes, which is problematic in light of the significant variation discovered in separate studies of Apis mellifera . The Eastern Honey bee, Apis cerana, is the second most studied honey bee species and has a broad distribution. However, the estimate of its mating frequency is based only of four colonies. In this study, we extend the data on A. cerana and test at the same time for geographic variation of mating frequency, using semi-domesticated, well differentiated populations in Thailand. The different mating frequencies will be related to viral disease load at the colony and population level to test the disease hypothesis for the evolution of multiple mating.