Royal succession and caste-independent reproductive potential in honey bee (Apis mellifera) patrilines

Queen selection remains a poorly understood aspect of social behavior in honey bees (Apis mellifera). This is especially pertinent given the current state of decline and our reliance on honey bees for agriculture. The queen selection and rearing process presents an important opportunity to understand and target queen quality as a means to improve overall colony performance.

Honey bee queens embody the reproductive potential of their colonies. The dependence of colony success upon queen quality is so great that emergency replacement queens are collectively selected and reared by the various worker subfamilies in the colony without nepotistic patrilineal competition. While the process of queen selection behavior is largely unknown, some evidence supports the existence of rare “royal” patrilines, members of which are preferentially reared as queens. This study examines emergency queen rearing in the context of caste-independent subfamilial variation in reproductive potential.

When queenless honey bee workers are unable to rear a replacement queen, some will activate their ovaries and produce a final generation of drones before the colony dies. We have analyzed worker-selected queen candidates in conjunction with ovary activation and successful reproduction in workers to determine whether individuals from “royal” patrilines exhibit superior reproductive traits regardless of caste. Such caste-independent reproductive traits would potentially indicate that queen selection and patriline frequencies are influenced by a tradeoff between queen and worker traits.