The first site that came up to do with this topic of the Anarchistic Bees in my google search was very short and interesting. It follows in brief: The second site that came up was again done by Ben Oldroyd, same participant as the first site. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, will tomorrow.
"Monday, 27 October 2003 - 1:24 PM
0406
This presentation is part of : Student Competition Ten-Minute Papers, Cb1, Apiculture and Social Insects
Anarchistic honey bees: regulation of worker reproduction
Shelley Hoover1, Mark Winston1, and Ben Oldroyd2. (1) Simon Fraser University, Biological Sciences, 8888 University Way, Burnaby, BC, Canada, (2) University of Sydney, School of Biological Sciences, Macleay Building, A12, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Division of labour is a defining characteristic of eusocial insect societies, and includes the partitioning of reproduction to one or few individuals. However, in most social insects, the less-reproductive individuals are capable of reproduction when the dominant individual is removed. In the honey bee (Apis mellifera), workers have ovaries that are normally inactive when the colony is queenright, and become activated only upon queen loss. A suite of ‘cheater’ genes allowing workers to reproduce in queenright colonies would be predicted to be selected for when at low frequencies. Such a trait has emerged in ‘anarchistic’ honey bees; these bees have high levels of worker reproduction, even in queenright colonies. Previous evidence suggests that anarchistic workers may have a higher threshold for ovary regulating pheromones than do wild-type workers. The present experiments compare the ovary development and retinue response of anarchistic and wild-type workers after exposure to queen and brood pheromones. "
This is an interesting topic to do a little bit of studying on, which I will. Have a wonderful day, great life and health. Cindi