# General beekeeping > Queen raising >  Pam Hunter - Sex life of honeybee

## kevboab

I was in Edinburgh last night for the talk by Pam on the wonderful sex life of the honeybee and during the Q & A session a gentleman asked Pam how the queen stores the sperm from the multiple drones she mates with ie Is the sperm mixed in one large pot and dispensed in random fashion OR is it stored as separate packages from each drone and dispensed sequentially which then gave possible reason as to how a well behaved colony can suddenly turn into a narky colony for no apparent reason. 

Pam was unable to shed light on the actual answer but I myself am now curious to know. 

Any thoughts ?

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## kevboab

Apologies. It's Pam not Pan. Fat fingers on phone to blame. Sorry. Can't figure out how to edit post title.

Its Pam now ... just ask the all-powerful one and it will be done!  There was an option for the thread creator to edit the title within 30 min.  It is now 90 min, but I guess that Tapatalk access may not give you that option.

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## gavin

If I recall correctly the sperm is mixed at least a bit before a subset is squirreled away for use during her reign, and the rest discarded.  Pretty sure there will be enough mixing to prevent a colony changing temperament due to genetic change.

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## Jon

The sperm is fully mixed in the spermatheca.
Robert Paxton covered this in his presentation at the Bibba conference last Sunday.
There is a suggestion that for the first week or two after mating the sperm may not be fully mixed but after that it is random.
The thing about sperm being stored in discrete packages this affecting the colour or the temper of the workers is an old wives take which gets aired from time to time.

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## Jon

Also, if a queen mates with 10 drones they do not each contribute 10%. As gav mentioned a lot is discarded.
I remember reading some papers on this where the sperm was analysed and some drones contribute a large percentage and others very little.

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## Little_John

> Sperm mixing occurs within the queen’s spermatheca, and comparable spermatozoa
> representation of all mates follows at fluctuating intervals (Laidlaw and Page 1984)


However, I've also read (somewhere ....  I'll try to find the source) that the last drone to mate has a slight genetic advantage as sperm appears to follow the "last in, first out" rule to some extent.  From that, I'd say that the sperm is mixed, but not 100% thoroughly. (which is pretty-much what Jon has just said ... must try to be a bit quicker on the keyboard  :Smile:  ) So - for a few days it's "last in, first out" - after that, random.

LJ

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## Jon

R Paxton discounted any first mating or last mating advantage in his presentation.

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## kevboab

Thanks for the quick replies. Didn't think I would have had time to dig out answers myself so soon but the weather has killed business for us today. Found this which backs up what both Gavin and Jon have said.

If anyone fancies a read it can be found here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1847503/

The honey bee queen makes one to four flights (Roberts, 1944) away from the colony when she is about a week old, mating with from seven to 44 males in rapid succession (Taber, 1954; Moritz et al., 1996; Neumann et al., 1999; Tarpy & Page, 2001). Over the next 2448 h, the sperm migrate to the spermatheca (Ruttner et al., 1971). This movement is enabled by contractions in the queen's abdomen (Koeniger, 1986), by sperm motility (Collins, 2000a) and the presence of spermathecal fluid (Gessner & Ruttner, 1977). Only about 35% of the sperm are actually retained in the spermatheca (Koeniger & Koeniger, 2000), the rest are lost from the queen.

Genetic studies using phenotypic markers have shown that sperm from all of the mated drones become randomly distributed within the spermatheca (Page et al., 1984) and relatively constant levels of all paternal types are represented in the worker offspring. Therefore there is little or no sperm competition, although different drones may contribute variable numbers of viable sperm (Woyke & Jasinski, 1978; Collins, 2004). The creation of colonies of multiple paternal lines of workers, or subfamilies, is evolutionarily desirable, as these colonies have the capability of responding readily to wide changes in the environment (Jones et al., 2004) and extreme polyandry increases the fitness of the queen by reducing the colony-level impact of her laying non-viable, diploid drone eggs (Tarpy & Page, 2001).

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## Jon

> The creation of colonies of multiple paternal lines of workers, or subfamilies, is evolutionarily desirable, as these colonies have the capability of responding readily to wide changes in the environment (Jones et al., 2004)


Keith Delaplane alluded to this in his presentation at the SBA conference in 2012.
Using II queens were inseminated with sperm from a single drone up to a mixture from about 50and there was a direct correlation between colony health and vigour and the number of drones in the mix.

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## Little_John

> R Paxton discounted any first mating or last mating advantage in his presentation.


I've only had time for a quick look - this is one reference to it, but haven't yet found the one I was looking for ... 




> The amount of semen per drone is known to be highly variable (Woyke, 1973) and could be determined genetically and/or by the quality of the mother colony. Also the mating strategy of the individual drone could affect its success. Moritz (1986) showed for multiply inseminated queens a weak last male advantage. The last semen with which a queen was inseminated, had a higher frequency in the offspring than early inseminations. 
> 
> Male fitness of honeybee colonies (Apis mellifera L.), 2003

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## Rosie

I have a theory about this which Robert Paxton thought was unlikely but it was clear that the the tests have not be done to prove or disprove it.  I wonder if the conditions in the spermatheca will need to match the sperm in some way in order to nurture it for the 5 years that are necessary to span the queen's life.  If that's the case it could be that exotic sperm might not last the whole 5 years. Hence as the queen gets older the workers become purer.  That might explain the changing nature of a colony, which is probably something we have all seen.  Even if all the different types of sperm match the spermatheca equally it could also be that long lived races have evolved long-lived sperm.  I can't see any reason why there should not be a difference in this respect between sub-species.

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## mbc

Very little of our body of knowledge comes from research done in our conditions with our native bees.  In an ideal world funding would be available for such specialisation, but in the meantime we have to be grateful for what work there is available.  
I would hazard that some things we are told are actually a bit different for our circumstances, off the top of my head I would say average time for virgins to mate(certainly by my observations) and possibly number of drones mated with would be quite a bit different for amm in West Wales than the accepted figures published for aml bees in dfferent climates.  Your (Rosie) theory on sperm storage may yet hold water.

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## Jon

Some sources will tell you that a virgin has only 21 days to mate but I have had the odd queen start to lay 40+ days from emergence.

Mind you, there are not many queens living for 5 years now. 2 -3 years would be much more likely for mine.
There seems to be a lot of supersedure. Starting to sound like Roger Patterson! 
Next up, Ley lines!

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## Jon

....

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## mbc

> ....


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## gavin

I can see you guys really bonded at Llangollen  :EEK!:

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## kevboab

Ha.... Ley lines, brings me on to my question from last night. Having spent a thoroughly enjoyable second evening with Pam hearing how bees perceive the world I had the opportunity to ask Pam what her theory was on how drones manage to find congregation areas which are seemingly used year after year given that they are thrown out to die and the information cannot be passed on to the next generation of drones. One of our members mentioned the possibility of ley lines which set Pam off on her own thoughts. It was a priceless moment. People, bonkers and weird were included in her response. Anyway, Pam nor I are none the wiser on how these areas are found by the drones year after year. Can anyone help us in our quest ?

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## mbc

fwiw I think bees following lines is highly plausible

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## gavin

Landscape structure influences pollinator movements  and directly affects plant reproductive success
Louise Cranmer, Duncan McCollin and Jeff Ollerton

PS Lea lines perhaps, the lines of hedgerows and fences around fields.

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## Jon

> fwiw I think bees following lines is highly plausible


Even if they are imaginary?

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## mbc

> Even if they are imaginary?


I've yet to see the research conclusively proving individual bees have the cognative power to imagine lines.

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## Jon

If Roger can imagine up a ley line I reckon a bee can also rise to the occasion.

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## mbc

> If Roger can imagine up a ley line I reckon a bee can also rise to the occasion.


but the sticks really do cross

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## Rosie

I find ley lines hard to accept but I feel the same way about water divining too.  Unfortunately the unsettling fact is that I have seen both apparently working.

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## Mellifera Crofter

> ... Landscape structure influences pollinator movements  ... 
> PS Lea lines perhaps ...


Not just bees.  I've heard that birds (I think it was pigeons) follow roads, and turn left or right at the cross roads rather than fly 'as the crow flies'. 

(What is a 'lea line', Gavin?)
Kitta

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## gavin

> (What is a 'lea line', Gavin?)
> Kitta


Field margins I was thinking.

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## Mellifera Crofter

Sorry - I should have looked that up!

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## alancooper

> how drones manage to find congregation areas which are seemingly used year after year given that they are thrown out to die and the information cannot be passed on to the next generation of drones


Landscape structure is part of the honey bee environment. Surely drone congregation takes place in parts of the environment (warm/sheltered?) likely to give a greater chance of mating success. So - these parts of the landscape are likely to be used year after year by drones, who probably find them in similar ways that workers find the best food sources.

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## Rosie

I suspect they are attracted to thermals as much as anything else so that they can float about all afternoon saving their energy for the big chase.

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## Jon

The smart ones (from my point of view) mate over the apiary!
No riff-raff drones in the mix.
I wonder if this is a heritable trait.
I witness this on several occasions most summers.
I should hold on to these queens and set up an apiary where all the queens in it have mated locally and see if it is something you can select for.

This one mated over the apiary and started laying two weeks ago.

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## mbc

> Landscape structure is part of the honey bee environment. Surely drone congregation takes place in parts of the environment (warm/sheltered?) likely to give a greater chance of mating success. So - these parts of the landscape are likely to be used year after year by drones, who probably find them in similar ways that workers find the best food sources.





> I suspect they are attracted to thermals as much as anything else so that they can float about all afternoon saving their energy for the big chase.


Don't you think you two may be demystifying the romance of the bees following magic lines and keeping a bee spirit memory of the ancient sacred mating grounds?

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## gavin

> I wonder if this is a heritable trait. 
> 
> [snip]
> 
> This one mated over the apiary and started laying two weeks ago.


I see that you are also breeding them for self-placement in queen marking cages.  Nice!

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## Jon

There were a lot of queens marked in that cage over the summer so it must have built up a decent pheromone level by now!
Would probably be useful inside a bait box next year.

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## prakel

> I was in Edinburgh last night for the talk by Pam on the wonderful sex life of the honeybee and during the Q & A session a gentleman asked Pam how the queen stores the sperm from the multiple drones she mates with ie Is the sperm mixed in one large pot and dispensed in random fashion OR is it stored as separate packages from each drone and dispensed sequentially which then gave possible reason as to how a well behaved colony can suddenly turn into a narky colony for no apparent reason. 
> 
> 
> Any thoughts ?


I think that the nature of a random mix is that there will be times when a statistically higher proportion of sperm from one or two drones will be used because they happen to be 'together' even if not actually grouped in an intentional manner. 

A recurring phenomena which interests me is often seen towards the end of the winter in hybridised colonies where we see a definite colour shift from orange banding to a predominantly dark (healthy) bee. Here, the banding gives way to a bee of uniform carnica appearance, Gavin has mentioned seeing the same colour shift -presumably towards a bee of native Scottish appearance although he didn't mention that specific. There are of course a couple of possible reasons for this.

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## Jon

They outlive the ones with orange banding would be one explanation.

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## prakel

Yes it would  :Smile:

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## prakel

> Is the sperm mixed in one large pot and dispensed in random fashion OR is it stored as separate packages from each drone and dispensed sequentially which then gave possible reason as to how a well behaved colony can suddenly turn into a narky colony for no apparent reason.


This related link to an article on the USDA website has recently been posted on beesource:

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/ar/archiv...4/bees0304.htm




> "We also found that even when you inseminate a queen with a 50-50 mix of African drone semen and EHB semen, the queens preferentially use the African semen first to produce the next generation of workers and drones, sometimes at a ratio as high as 90 to 10," she says. "We don't know why this happens, but it's probably one of the strongest factors in AHBs replacing EHBs."

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## gavin

Interesting!  I wonder if they just muscle the other types out the way somehow, wriggle to be first in the queue out of the spermatheca.

The comments of mine referred to earlier - I'd wondered whether there was simply a seasonal shift in how dark a worker looks without any shift in their genetics.  Early spring may be a time when darker workers are better adapted, so genes for melanin production are more strongly switched on then.  Pure speculation based on some very casual observations.

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## prakel

> Interesting!  I wonder if they just muscle the other types out the way somehow, wriggle to be first in the queue out of the spermatheca.


That was my initial thought as well. Which ever way it works, queen selection or sperm with more 'go' it does perhaps offer another variable to our understanding (or lack of, in my case!).




> The comments of mine referred to earlier - I'd wondered whether there was simply a seasonal shift in how dark a worker looks without any shift in their genetics.  Early spring may be a time when darker workers are better adapted, so genes for melanin production are more strongly switched on then.  Pure speculation based on some very casual observations.


I had intended to search out that thread as I seem to remember posting a reference to an observation that Brother Adam reported about a seasonal colour shift in a strain of carniolan, in it's home range rather than in his own apiaries. It's an interesting thing to see what ever the reason behind it, especially when other, closely related colonies in the same location demonstrate no noticeable colour shift.

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## HJBee

Do all the strains not get darker as they age, I'm sure I've noticed this with my dark mongrels?

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## Jon

Newly emerged bees are lighter for a few hours.

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## prakel

> Do all the strains not get darker as they age, I'm sure I've noticed this with my dark mongrels?


Hi, perhaps, but here I'm referring to a very definite shift in colouration in highly hybridized stocks. We often see certain stocks where the vast majority of bees present for a month or so in early spring are almost all of a clear carnica 'type' at least in appearance. As the season advances orange banded bees become far more apparent until they definitely outnumber the ones without that colouration. It's perhaps not the easiest observation to relate but I'm definitely not seeing 'orange' bees loosing their colour through age. 

As mentioned earlier, it's even more interesting (to me) to see sister colonies mated from the same apiary which show no observable change in colour at all.

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