In most animals, longevity is achieved at the expense of fertility, but queen honey bees do not show this tradeoff. Queens are both long-lived and fertile, whereas workers, derived from the same genome, are both relatively short-lived and normally sterile. It has been suggested, on the basis of results from workers, that vitellogenin (Vg), best known as a yolk protein synthesized in the abdominal fat body, acts as an antioxidant to promote longevity in queen bees. We explored this hypothesis, as well as related roles of insulin-IGF-1 signaling and juvenile hormone. Vg was expressed in thorax and head fat body cells in an age-dependent manner, with old queens showing much higher expression than workers. In contrast, Vg expression in worker head was much lower. Queens also were more resistant to oxidative stress than workers. These results support the hypothesis that caste-specific differences in Vg expression are involved in queen longevity. Consistent with predictions from Drosophila, old queens had lower head expression of insulin-like peptide and its putative receptors than did old workers. Juvenile hormone affected the expression of Vg and insulin-IGF-1 signaling genes in opposite directions. These results suggest that conserved and species-specific mechanisms interact to regulate queen bee longevity without sacrificing fecundity.Apis mellifera ͉ lifespan ͉ social insect H oney bees (Apis mellifera) provide an attractive model to identify the molecular mechanisms regulating variation in lifespan. Workers and queens develop from the same genome, but queen lifespan is Ϸ10-fold longer (1). Moreover, queen longevity is achieved without the typical tradeoff between longevity and reproduction. Queens lay up to 2,000 eggs per day (2) and live for 1-3 years. Workers, in contrast, have limited fecundity and live for 3-6 weeks during spring and summer in temperate climates (1).Insulin-IGF-1 signaling (IIS) is a key integrative pathway regulating aging, fertility and other important biological processes in vertebrates and invertebrates. Down-regulation of IIS is associated with increased longevity and decreased fertility in Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster (3). Although IIS functions are widely conserved, it is not known whether naturally occurring differences in longevity also are a result of variation in this pathway.Recent advances in insect molecular endocrinology have revealed connections between IIS and juvenile hormone (JH), a major insect hormone with diverse influences on growth, reproduction, and longevity in many species (4). Studies with Drosophila point to a connection between IIS and JH (5, 6). Because queens are both long-lived and reproductively active, the unique relationship between JH and vitellogenin (Vg) in honey bees has attracted attention (7). Honey bee Vg is a 180-kDa glycolipoprotein (8) synthesized in fat body cells and released to the hemolymph. Vg is best known as a yolk protein and is taken up by developing oocytes (9). JH is a gonadotropin and regulates vitellogenesis in ...

Natural diversity in aging and other life history patterns is a hallmark of organismal variation. Related species, populations, and individuals within populations show genetically based variation in life span and other aspects of age-related performance. Population differences are especially informative because these differences can be large relative to within-population variation and because they occur in organisms with otherwise similar genomes. We used experimental evolution to produce populations divergent for life span and late-age fertility and then used deep genome sequencing to detect sequence variants with nucleotide-level resolution. Several genes and genome regions showed strong signatures of selection, and the same regions were implicated in independent comparisons, suggesting that the same alleles were selected in replicate lines. Genes related to oogenesis, immunity, and protein degradation were implicated as important modifiers of late-life performance. Expression profiling and functional annotation narrowed the list of strong candidate genes to 38, most of which are novel candidates for regulating aging. Life span and early-age fecundity were negatively correlated among populations; therefore the alleles we identified also are candidate regulators of a major life-history trade-off. More generally, we argue that hitchhiking mapping can be a powerful tool for uncovering the molecular bases of quantitative genetic variation.

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are eusocial insects that exhibit striking caste-specific differences in longevity. Queen honey bees live on average 1-2 years whereas workers live on average 15-38 days in the summer and 150-200 days in the winter. Previous studies of senescence in the honey bee have focused on establishing the importance of extrinsic mortality factors (predation, weather) and behavior (nursing and foraging) in worker bee longevity. However, few studies have tried to elucidate the mechanisms that allow queen honey bees to achieve their long lifespan without sacrificing fecundity. Here, we review both types of studies and emphasize the importance of understanding both proximate and ultimate causes of the unusual life history of honey bee queens.

Honey bees are social insects that exhibit striking caste-specific differences in longevity. Queen honey bees live on average 1-2 years whereas workers live 2 to 6 weeks in the summer and about 20 weeks in the winter. It is not clear whether queen-worker differences in longevity are due to intrinsic physiological differences in the rate of senescence, to differential exposure to extrinsic factors such as predation and adverse environmental conditions, or both. To determine if the relatively short life span of worker bees involves senescence, we measured age-specific resistance to three different physiological stressors (starvation, thermal, and oxidative stress) while eliminating agerelated differences in foraging activity and minimizing age-related differences in energy expenditure. Despite these manipulations, older worker bees were still significantly less resistant to all three stressors than were younger bees. These results indicate that the regulation of worker bee lifespan involves senescence, in addition to extrinsic factors.

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