YOU REALLY ARE WHAT YOU EAT?
One of the weirdest things about a Queen bee is that she can apparently create four different types of offspring from any egg that she lays. By excluding stored sperm she creates Drones, the male bee with only 16 chromosomes. From her fertilised eggs she can create three distinct female types (who carry 32 chromosomes). She can create more Queens (for swarms or replacements), hardworking but short-lived Summer Bees and much longer lived Winter Bees. But how?
Some Beekeepers think that this flexibility indicates that her (female) eggs are somehow genetically altered by the Queen to invoke a different phenotype or body shape. The reality is actually far more interesting, as usual. It isn’t genetics exactly that we need to consider, but epigenetics. That’s to say, they start from the same place, but have different trajectories; genes get switched on (or off) later, after the fact and in the days after hatching. It’s a process called gene expression, and bizarrely perhaps, food is the key.
As larvae –
* Queen bees are exclusively fed Royal Jelly (a glandular secretion produced by mature bees) .
* Summer bees start on Royal Jelly and move onto a honey/pollen mix called ‘beebread’.
* Winter bees, start with slightly more Royal Jelly and move to a higher protein, pollen rich mix.
Gene expression in Winter bees is particularly fascinating since it promotes life extension. Winter bees grow the protein vitellogenin in their enlarged fat cells. Its a powerful antioxidant credited with stress resilience, cell-based immunity, and longevity. It comfortably allows them to exceed a Summer bee’s allotted 42 day life span by several months. How’s that for amazing?
See – Vitellogenin in Honey Bee Behavior and Lifespan, Honeybee Neurobiology and Behavior
Gro V. Amdam, Erin Fennern & Heli Havukainen
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