Characteristic Analysis Of The Queen Retinue Workers

Honeybee is a kind of social insect which has a high degree of resource sharing,highly structured information exchange and a high degree of social division of labor.The semiochemicals released by a honeybee queen is attracting workers,which we named queen retinue workers,around her.The circle composed of queen retinue workers is named as queen retinue workers' circle.In this passage,we have studied 4 characteristics of queen retinue workers.Experiment 1: We choosed Apis mellifera to be the experimental insects,and we were intended to learn the age-bracket of the queen retinue workers.There are 2 stages of this experiment: the stage of marking and shooting.In the stage of marking,we used dyes to label 300 newly hatched workers and then put them into each experimental colony.Every2 days,we marked workers with different color and we marked workers more than ten times in total.In the stage of shooting,we used DVD to record the forming process of the queen retinue workers' circle.After that,we counted the number of marked workers in each age by watching the videos.The result of this study shows that the age-bracket of retinue workers is 2-23 d,but mainly in 6-18 d.Experiment 2: We choosed Apis mellifera to be the experimental insects,and we shoot for the conformation of the circle consisted of queen retinue workers on a DVD.After that,we counted the number of queen retinue workers by watching the videos.The result of this study shows that the general rules of the number of queen retinue workers is like that:feeding>resting>laying;the number of queen retinue workers when the queen were taking rest,or being fed will be significantly higher than the number of queen retinue workers when the queen were laying eggs.Experiment 3: We choosed Apis mellifera to be the experimental insects.we sampled94 queen nurses and the queen from each colony.After that,4 microsatellite loci were selected to determine the subfamily.Microsatellite DNA analyses reveal a total of 22,13 and 13 subfamilies in colonies respectively.It shows that the queen nurses are not represented in a significantly different proportion in honeybee colonies.That is,all age-appropriate workers can have chance to be a queen nurse.Experiment 4: We choosed Apis mellifera to be the experimental insects.We sampled94 queen retinue workers,94 workers(we named them as ‘control workers')were sampled randomly and the queen from two colonies respectively.After that,we used 4microsatellite loci to carry out the individual genotype of each worker.The result shows that the number of patrilines of queen retinue workers and ‘control workers' in colony H is9 and 13 respectively.The number of patrilines of queen retinue workers and ‘control workers' in colony I is 6 and 12 respectively.In addition,a significant difference wasfound in both colonies by comparing the subfamily distribution between queen retinue workers and ‘control workers' with Fisher exact tests.Thus,we indicate that there is a genotypical component for the performance of queen retinue.