Different fathers

[Torq]

Hi Guys,
here's a couple of pics through the escape hole of some of my bees, notice that some have a light brown first abdomen segment and some have no brown at all!

The queens sister in the hive next door has uniform coloured bees and are darker. None of my other hives have any hint of light brown bees and I haven't had any bees with this colouring for at least 2 years.

Torq

 

[victor meldrew]

All workers in a hive are half sisters, the produce of up to 15 drones . Colours within a colony often Change and change again so does temperament !


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[jd101k2000]

Yes, it all depends on which drone's sperm the queen is using from her spermatheca (sperm receptacle).

 

[kazmcc]

Great pictures. I had different coloured bees in my hive too, they were more yellow than the others. Very interesting to see.

 

[Torq]

I know about the multiple mating and the storage of sperm. I just thought it interesting for a couple of reasons.
1. A visual example of the results of multiple mating.
2. That none of the other hives have any hint of this colour even though their queens (all this years and home produced) most likely visited the same drone congregation areas for mating.
3. And as stated earlier her sister next door (who was the other product of a 3 way split) did not find any of these brown jacket wearing bad boys when she was out on the town!

 

[Apple]

I too have in the past noted the odd yellow stripe in my usually uniform black bees, however since the local land owner, who owns all of the land for miles around and farms organically, now will not allow beekeepers to have bees on his land ( I am a relative by marriage so I do not count!) the yellow stripes have vanished.
I suspect someone was keeping something very different to my bees, and one of my virgins had an unfortunate encounter!

Maybe you have an imposter locally, messing up from what I can see in your wonderful images, a beautiful specimen of the true bees of the British isles ?

Do not worry the yellow stripe ingression allele will fade out eventually, when the imposters die out due to inability to adapt!


James

 

[Jimy Dee]

Well said James