Social evolution in honey bees has produced strong queen-worker dimorphism for plastic traits that depend on larval nutrition. The honey bee developmental program includes both larval components that determine plastic growth responses to larval nutrition and nurse components that regulate larval nutrition. We studied how these two components contribute to variation in worker and queen body size and ovary size for two pairs of honey bee lineages that show similar differences in worker body-ovary size allometry but have diverged over different evolutionary time scales. Our results indicate: that the lineages have diverged for both nurse and larval developmental components, that rapid changes in worker body-ovary allometry may disrupt queen development, and that queen-worker dimorphism arises mainly from discrete nurse-provided nutritional environments, not from a developmental switch that converts variable nutritional environments into discrete phenotypes. Both larval and nurse components have likely contributed to the evolution of queen-worker dimorphism.

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This study was carried out to determine the effects of age and number of grafted larvae on acceptance rates, body weight, body length, head width and length, thorax width and length, and wing width and length of queen bees. One breeding and eleven starter hives were used for rearing queen bees. Totally, 495 one, two, and three-day-old larvae were grafted into starter hives comprising 30, 45, and 60 and 414 larvae were accepted; thus, generally, the acceptance rate was calculated as 83%. The best acceptance rate was calculated in three-day-old larvae group as 85.15%. There were found a statistically significant effect of the number of grafted larvae on body length and head width of queen. However, there were any effects on weight, head length, thorax width, thorax length, wing width, wing length, and acceptance rate of larvae. Age of grafted larvae did not have a statistically significant effect on head width, head length, wing width and acceptance rate of larvae. On the other hand, age of grafted larvae had a statistically significant effect on queen weight, body length, thorax width and length, and wing length of queen. If bee breeders wish to improve their stock, they should graft one-day-old larvae for rearing better queen bees.

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This study was conducted to determine the effects of the queen’s age on performance of the honeybee (A. mellifera anatoliaca) colonies at nomad beekeeping conditions. Performances of the colonies, which had 0, 1, 2 and 3 year-old queens, were compared. The number of combs, brood areas, wintering ability survival rate and honey yield were determined as performance criteria. The average number of combs with bees throughout the experiment in Group I, Group II, Group III and Group IV was 10.92±0.78, 14.68±0.55, 10.10±0.60, 7.88±0.45 number combs/colony; the average of brood areas was 3078±372.5 cm2, 3668±460.3 cm2, 2215±294.0 cm2, 1665.38±241.8 cm2; the average of wintering ability was 84.3±2.9%, 88.0±3.7%, 46.6±19.0%, 26.8±16.5%; the survival rate was 100%, 100%, 60%, 40%; and the average of honey yields was 31.4±1.89 kg, 41.5±1.05 kg, 20.4±2.62 kg and 12.0±1.41 kg per colony, respectively. A significant and negative correlation between queen age and brood production (r=-80.2), colony strength (r=-62.5), wintering ability (r=-66) and honey yield (r=-75.6) were calculated (P<0.01). The colonies headed by young queens had more brood areas, longer worker colony population, better wintering ability and greater honey yield in comparison to colonies headed by old queens