The Honey Bee Colony's Criterion for Candidate Selection: "Ongoing" or "One-Shot"?

Area of Science:

• Apiculture and social insect behavior
• Insect reproductive biology
• Colony dynamics

Background:

• Honey bee colony survival depends on a queen.
• Emergency queen rearing from worker larvae is crucial when a queen is lost.
• Nepotism is hypothesized to influence worker choices in selecting queen candidates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To simulate emergency queen rearing in honey bees without nepotism.
• To record colony selection results based on larval age.
• To evaluate the quality and impact of emergently reared queens.

Main Methods:

• Simulated emergency queen rearing in queenless honey bee colonies under natural conditions.
• Recorded selection of queen candidates at larval, capping, and emergence stages.
• Assessed queen quality through worker follower counts and gene expression analysis (vg, hex110, Jh).

Main Results:

• One-day-old worker larvae were preferentially selected for queen rearing.
• Queens reared from younger larvae (1-day-old) showed superior quality, indicated by higher gene expression related to ovarian development and greater worker follower attraction.
• No significant difference in birth weight was observed among queens reared from larvae of different ages (1-3 days).

Conclusions:

• Honey bee colonies employ a gradual "quality control" process for selecting emergency queens, optimizing development.
• Larval age is a critical factor in determining queen quality and subsequent colony performance.
• The selection process is dynamic, with quality being refined at multiple stages, not finalized early on.