Anarchistic bees

[Cindi]

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

[Shizzell]

Hmmm. Anarchistic Bees. I suppose we (Humans) should expect this. Its only natural selection. Everytime a hive loses a queen, we give it a new one. Why should they even attempt to grow a queen? We'll just give them a new one. Just like in humans, people that wear glasses are becoming more and more popular. Yes, you can assume that the traits are being passed down simply through mating. However, lets say that everyone that had glasses died 30 years younger than the people that didn't. Eventually natural selection would concur, and people as a whole would start evolving, eliminating glasses wearing people. But, since life for a person with glasses is almost no different that people that do not wear glasses, we are not evolving our eyesight. Same thing with bees. We'ved tamed them and taught them over time that if they need a queen we will give them one. Wild bees rarely have a problem with queens, for a good reason - they need them for survival.

A long post, but hopefully someone understood what I said.

:-D

Jake

[reinbeau]

Well, one thing is wrong with your analogy - the older people get the worse their eyes get (usually).  People live longer nowadays, so more end up with glasses on their heads.  I don't think natural selection has a thing to do with it!

I think the bees know better than we do - even 'our' bees. 

[doak]

I don't think we have tamed the bees. We may have bred them into gentleness, on a limited level.
doak

[nepenthes]

Uhh, their is a species of bee that is a parasite OF honey bees in Africa. that Fits your description.

[Cindi]

Jake, surely some interesting thoughts you have!!!  Have a wonderful day. Great life and health. Cindi

[Shizzell]

reinbeau, my analogy doesn't fit 100%, but what analagy does? However, your explanation of my falseness of my assumption is another addition to my argument. You say people's eyesight gets worse as they grow older. This is true. However, since human's processes such as growth, heart rate, all detererate when they get older. If eyesite was a need to survive, our eyesight would start to evolve. Mineral lackage, and other hormones that contribute to bad eyesight are simply being used for other purposes so that we would survive for a longer period of time.

doak - What is the definition of "tame"? I believe it is to become more gentle with human interaction. That is precisely what we have done to these bees. No wonder bees have CCD, and mites and other problems, anything that happens to them, it will be fixed. We need to start letting bees handle some problems themselves. But if we don't help them, the hive might die off, and we'll have no bees where we want to pollinate.

So now we're in a predicament.

Jake