Queen Bee Harem Dancers

[S.A.M.]

Honeybee queens have sex with harems of males apparently to give birth to much better dancers, research reveals. North American honeybee queens each have sex with an average of seven to 20 males, with the giant honeybee in Asia know to demand up to 104 mates

To see why honeybee queens might prefer a life of promiscuity, researchers compared a trio of queens each inseminated by just one male drone with a trio of queens inseminated by 15 drones.

The genetically diverse colonies of queens inseminated by 15 males turned out better dancers — they performed more waggle dances and longer dances. Worker bees use waggle dances to reveal where food is to nest mates, and genetically diverse colonies dispatched more foragers to look for food.

"What really surprised us was the extent of difference," researcher Heather Mattila, a honeybee behaviorist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., told LiveScience. "In some colonies, you can see the less genetically diverse bees pretty much just standing still on the honeycombs on the videotape, while bees in the genetically diverse colonies are dancing or have left to go forage."

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22768188/

 

[Orleander]

and that's why its good to be the whore!

so do they dance to give directions to honey or......? why do they dance?

 

[S.A.M.]

I think it is a measure of genetic diversity.

 

[Roman]

The dance is to give directions to honey.

These different lineages would presumably pose a problem for kin selection, and introduce hive strife between females of different fathers.

 

[DwayneD.L.Rabon]

Well, In general Queen bees lay about 20,000 ro 30,000 eggs in a short period of time, once per year.
If queens have sex with more than one other male bee it is more than likly do to the fact that she can not tell which one is the fertile male, or that several appear as the potent male. The same issue occuring with finding the next queen of the colony, out of several larva born only one will be chosen as the next queen of the colony by the mother queen. the queen bee probally can not determine the sound frequency(chrip/sound clicks) of the potent and fertile male, as male bees socialize with each other probally using the same meathod of communication and so have the same sound clicks confusing the queen when the season for reproducing takes place. So she must have sex with several to gain conception. Some of the males may be sterile or produce a low quantity or sperm.
The fact that bees are basically inbreeding within the colony defines that only a small number of bees will be potent enough to successfully reproduce, in other words fertile enough to produce a colony of bees, the same exist for the queen bee only a select few have a possiblity of becoming the queen bee.

DwayneD.L.Rabon