Apis mellifera, honey bee

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Anatomy of honeybee ovary

Dearden PK. Germ cell development in the Honeybee (Apis mellifera); vasa and nanos expression. BMC Dev Biol. 2006 Feb 17;6:6.

Structure of the Honeybee ovary. A) Diagram of the morphology of an ovariole from a mated queen bee ovary. i) the late vitellarium, ii) the early vitellarium, iii) the germarium and terminal filament (the placement of germ cells in the terminal filament is unclear and thus not diagrammed). B) A projection of 25 confocal Z sections through the late germarium of a mated honeybee queen ovariole stained for DNA using Propidium iodide (red) and cortical actin using Alexa fluor 488 phalloidin (green). C) A single confocal section through the germarium of a honeybee queen ovariole, stained as per B, Note the circular actin-rich structures, possibly ring canals. D) Diagram of the morphology of a worker bee ovariole.

Apis mellifera have polytrophic meroistic ovaries, similar to those of Drosophila melanogaster. Despite this similarity, a number of differences in morphology and biology exist. One particularly important difference is that worker bee ovaries have many less ovarioles than those of queens. Workers in a queenright colony have small ovaries that are chemically repressed by the presence of the queen and her eggs. Removal of the queen from a colony can cause the reactivation of the worker bee ovaries and the workers may lay eggs.

Meroistic

In meroistic insect ovaries divisions of gonial cells lead to formation of clusters of sibling cells which remain interconnected by intercellular bridges forming a syncytium. In the meroistic ovary, the oocyte synthesizes little if any RNA. Most of the RNA which accumulates in the oocyte is synthesized by trophocytes.

Polytrophic

In the polytrophic meroistic ovary each ovariole contains a number of clusters of germ cells that form separate structural and functional units termed egg chambers. Each oocyte is associated with a cyst containing 1,3,7 or 15 trophocytes. The trophocytes are derived from the same cell as the oocyte.

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Reducing honeybee queen fighting ability

Dietemann V, Zheng HQ, Hepburn C, Hepburn HR, Jin SH, Crewe RM, Radloff SE, Hu FL, Pirk CW. Self assessment in insects: honeybee queens know their own strength. PLoS One. 2008 Jan 9;3(1):e1412.

Three A. m. ligustica queens (circled) coexisting peacefully within a colony.

In China, beekeepers found a way to prevent queens from killing one another by ablating their mandibles. By forcing several queens to cohabit, they create more productive colonies for commercial exploitation.

Interestingly, queens with ablated mandibles refrain from engaging in lethal contests that typically characterize their reproductive dominance behavior and coexist peacefully within a colony. This suggests that weak queens exploit an alternative reproductive strategy and provides an explanation for rare occurrences of queen cohabitation in nature. The results of experiments described in theis article further indicate that self-assessment, but not mutual assessment of fighting ability occurs prior to and during the agonistic encounters.

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Sex determination in Apis mellifera

Hoff M. Male or female? For honeybees, a single gene makes all the difference. PLoS Biol. 2009 Oct 20;7(10):e1000186.

Male or female? How genes send a developing embryo down one path or the other varies substantially among species. In honeybees, it boils down to whether a particular chromosomal location has the same version of a gene (called homozygous) or two different versions (heterozygous). Honeybees that have two different versions of the sex determination locus (SDL) develop female traits. Those that have two of the same version—or, more commonly, have only one version as a result of developing from an unfertilized egg—become male. This approach, known as complementary sex determination, is found in a number of social insects, yet is still poorly understood.

Male or female bees: It's the informational flow between genes that makes all the difference.

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Model of caste differentiation in Apis mellifera

Barchuk AR, Cristino AS, Kucharski R, Costa LF, Simões ZL, Maleszka R. Molecular determinants of caste differentiation in the highly eusocial honeybee Apis mellifera. BMC Dev Biol. 2007 Jun 18;7:70.

In honeybees, differential feeding of female larvae promotes the occurrence of two different phenotypes, a queen and a worker, from identical genotypes, through incremental alterations, which affect general growth, and character state alterations that result in the presence or absence of specific structures. Although previous studies revealed a link between incremental alterations and differential expression of physiometabolic genes, the molecular changes accompanying character state alterations remain unknown.

Proposed general model of caste differentiation in Apis mellifera. Arrows thickness indicates the relative action levels of the considered factors. Recent studies by our group suggest that the global differential programming of gene expression in the honeybee is controlled by DNA methylation mechanism in a manner similar to epigenetic transcriptional changes inducible by environmental factors in vertebrates (Maleszka et al., in preparation). For details see Section "Towards a unified model of caste differentiation in the honeybee".

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Waggle-dancing bees

Gross L. A New View of the Waggle Dance: Making Scents to Recruit Fellow Foragers. PLoS Biol. 2007 September; 5(9): e249.

Waggle-dancing bees (center, with red mark) release scents that recruit other foragers.

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Asiatic honeybees understand European honeybees

Su S, Cai F, Si A, Zhang S, Tautz J, Chen S. East learns from West: Asiatic honeybees can understand dance language of European honeybees. PLoS One. 2008 Jun 4;3(6):e2365.

Apis cerana cerana (Acc) bees (dark abdomens) following the dance of a marked and an unmarked Apis mellifera ligustica (Aml) forager (lighter abdomens) in the mixed-species colony. Both dancers had been trained to an artificial feeder 200 m away from the hive.

Movie^{(8.6M, mpg)}

If you see message "Windows Media Player cannot find the file.", please download the file to your computer to play it or go to the original article and play the movie from there. For more movies please see the original article (Open Access).

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amTOR knockdown blocks queen fate and results in workers

Patel A, Fondrk MK, Kaftanoglu O, Emore C, Hunt G, Frederick K, Amdam GV. The making of a queen: TOR pathway is a key player in diphenic caste development. PLoS One. 2007 Jun 6;2(6):e509.

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) provide a principal example of diphenic development. Excess feeding of female larvae results in queens (large reproductives). Moderate diet yields workers (small helpers). The signaling pathway that links provisioning to female developmental fate is not understood. Authors of the article tested their hypothesis that it could include TOR (target of rapamycin), a nutrient- and energy-sensing kinase that controls organismal growth.

Effect of amTOR suppression on caste characters in honey bees. In comparison to control (GFP), amTOR RNAi (RNAi): a, reduced larval growth (exemplified by 4-day-old larvae in sections of a microtiter plate, larval volume is mean±s. e. arbitrary units a.u.); delayed development, b–c, where b is a snapshot of the full phenotypic variance in each group (individuals were 19 days old) – controls emerged with queen morphology, or had advanced pigmentation (indicates more rapid development) and large size. RNAi bees were lightly pigmented and small in size; the latter effect is shown also in d, the wet-weight at adult emergence and in e, the final adult size. Adult size did not overlap between treatment groups (e vs. f, where f shows the two control bees with lowest wet-weight: 155 and 161 mg; weight-range after RNAi was 108–136 mg). amTOR RNAi also reduced ovary size g, to ovariole numbers characteristic of workers (GFP range was 12–180, RNAi range was 2–7 ovarioles per ovary). In sum, the divergence between control and amTOR RNAi is characteristic of queen vs. worker development. Bars are means±s. e. (three asterisks P<1.0 10⁻³). Scale bars a: 10 mm; b, e, f: 5 mm.

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Modern honey bee diversity

Kotthoff U, Wappler T, Engel MS. Miocene honey bees from the Randeck Maar of southwestern Germany (Hymenoptera, Apidae). Zookeys. 2011; (96): 11–37.

Modern honey bee diversity (all bees are workers and to the same scale).
A. Apis mellifera Linnaeus
B. Apis koschevnikovi Enderlein
C. Apis nigrocincta Smith
D. Apis cerana F abricius
E. Apis dorsata Fabricius
F. Apis florea Fabricius
G. Apis andreniformis Smith.

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Honey Bee Colony Losses in the U.S., Fall 2007 to Spring 2008

van Engelsdorp D, Hayes J Jr, Underwood RM, Pettis J. A survey of honey bee colony losses in the U.S., fall 2007 to spring 2008. PLoS ONE. 2008; 3(12): e4071.

Honey bee health is challenged on many fronts. Parasites, such as varroa mites (Varroa destructor), honey bee tracheal mites (Acarapis woodi), fungal, bacterial and viral diseases, and kleptoparasites such as small hive beetles (Aethina tumida), many of which have been introduced over the last 20 years to the continental U.S., are all challenges faced by beekeepers. In 2006, a poorly understood phenomenon, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), resulted in widespread losses in the U.S.

Between 0.75 and 1.00 million honey bee colonies are estimated to have died in the United States over the winter of 2007–2008. This article is an extensive survey of U.S. beekeepers across the continent, serving as a reference for comparison with future losses as well as providing guidance to future hypothesis-driven research on the causes of colony mortality.

Total colony loss (%) by state. A common practice in epidemiology is to look for spatial patterns to the occurrence of a disease or syndrome. With honey bee colonies making multiple moves around the country it is difficult to assign a colony loss to one region of the country. Losses were assigned to a specific state by the beekeeper and total losses varied by state with no discernable pattern.

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References

• Mitchell A. Africanized killer bees: a case study. Crit Care Nurse. 2006 Jun
• Danforth B. Bees. Curr Biol. 2007 Mar 6;17(5):R156-61.
• Elekonich MM, Roberts SP. Honey bees as a model for understanding mechanisms of life history transitions. Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol. 2005 Aug
• Scott Schneider S et al. The African honey bee: factors contributing to a successful biological invasion. Annu Rev Entomol. 2004
• Abramson CI, Aquino IS. Behavioral studies of learning in the Africanized honey bee (Apis mellifera L.). Brain Behav Evol. 2002
• Srinivasan MV. Honey Bees as a Model for Vision, Perception, and Cognition. Annu Rev Entomol. 2009 Sep 3.
• The truth about birds and the bees. Environ Health Perspect. 1998 Sep;106(9):A424-5.
• Giurfa M. Behavioral and neural analysis of associative learning in the honeybee: a taste from the magic well. J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol. 2007 Aug;193(8):801-24.
• PubMed: free full text articles about bees

Websites

• honeybee.tamu.edu
• Honeybee Research Home

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