Honeybee colony drone production and maintenance in accordance with environmental factors: an interplay of queen and worker decisions

Abstract

Social insect colonies display a remarkable ability to adjust investment in reproduction (i.e., production of sexuals) in accordance with environmental conditions such as season and food availability. How this feat is accomplished by the colony's queen(s) and workers remains a puzzle. Here, I review what we have learned about this subject in the European honeybee (Apis mellifera), specifically with regard to a colony's production of males (drones). I identify five environmental conditions that influence colony-level patterns of drone production and then define five stages of drone rearing that are accomplished by the queen and workers. Using this framework, I detail our current understanding of how the queen or workers adjust their actions at each stage of drone rearing in response to each of the environmental conditions. Future investigations of this topic in honeybees and other social insect societies will lead to a better understanding of how colonies manage to flexibly and efficiently allocate their resources under changing environmental conditions.

Reconciling laboratory and field assessments of neonicotinoid toxicity to honeybees

“…Rather than a decline in colony performance strictly speaking, these patterns should be viewed as a by-product of colonies' demographic compensation and regulation of reproductive investment [42]. Drones are more costly to produce and maintain than workers, among others because they do not participate to the foraging task force.…”

“…Drones are more costly to produce and maintain than workers, among others because they do not participate to the foraging task force. Thus, colonies decrease drone production when foraging conditions are poor, either due to resource scarcity [42] or seemingly due to forager excess mortality. Drone production typically peaks in spring [22,42] when virgin queens are most abundant and then when drones are most likely to successfully mate and pass along genes to other colonies.…”

“…Thus, colonies decrease drone production when foraging conditions are poor, either due to resource scarcity [42] or seemingly due to forager excess mortality. Drone production typically peaks in spring [22,42] when virgin queens are most abundant and then when drones are most likely to successfully mate and pass along genes to other colonies. Delayed drone production might somehow disrupt this biological synchrony, and should therefore be addressed in terms of mating success or fitness value of reared drones.…”

The Ability of Honey Bee Drones to Ejaculate

“…Because of the limited number of young queens, only a few drones have the chance to pass on their semen during copulation. The majority of drones die because of age, diseases, or predators (Free and Williams, 1975;Fukuda and Ohtani, 1977;Rueppell et al, 2005;Boes, 2010). A drone does not survive copulation (Witherell, 1965).…”

“…Colonies differ in terms of the number of drones reared and their reproductive activity (Kraus et al, 2003;Boes, 2010). The reproductive success of drones depends much on the size of the colony and the conditions prevailing during rearing and maturing (Jaycox, 1961;Boes, 2010;Bieńkowska et al, 2011;Mazeed, 2011;Abdelkader et al;. The drones reared in larger colonies achieve greater reproductive success; more often copulate with the queen, and also have a larger share in the number of offspring (Kraus et al, 2003).…”