Does Patriline Composition Change over a Honey Bee Queen's Lifetime?

A honey bee queen mates with a number of drones a few days after she emerges as an adult. Spermatozoa of different drones are stored in her spermatheca and used for the rest of the queen's life to fertilize eggs. Sperm usage is thought to be random, so that the patriline distribution within a honey bee colony would remain constant over time.

The influence of brood on the pollen consumption of worker bees (Apis mellifera L.).

(1) In midgut dry weight (tissue plus contents) of worker bees we found a representative parameter for pollen consumption. Midguts of bees of successive ages were analyzed and correlated with various parameters. The relative proportions of sugar, protein and water were either constant or negatively correlated with midgut weight.

Endothermic heat production in honeybee winter clusters.

In order to survive cold northern winters, honeybees crowd tightly together in a winter cluster. Present models of winter cluster thermoregulation consider the insulation by the tightly packed mantle bees as the decisive factor for survival at low temperatures, mostly ignoring the possibility of endothermic heat production. We provide here direct evidence of endothermic heat production by 'shivering' thermogenesis.