6.8 Queen Emergence And Behaviour Flashcards
What mixture of hypopharyngeal and mandibular gland secretions is royal jelly?
1:1
How does the larvae become a queen?
The feeding on the first days as a larvae are most important
The royal jelly sugar content is higher in sugar so as a phagostimulant
This causes the corpora allata to relase more juvenile hormone on day 3 of larval developent
This stimulates the synthesis of queen specific protiens
How much more frequently is the queen fed than the workers?
10x more
How long does it take for the queen to develop?
16 days
What is the main source of protien during after emergence for drones and the queen?
Brood food fed to them by the workers
Describe the emergence behaviour of the queen?
She uses her powerful mandibles to cut through the cell capping. Workers may thin out the tips of queen cells tohelp them emerge.
What are the 3 stages of queen rearing?
Gyne rearing –> gyne emergence –> gyne elimination
How is the queen rearing process designed for efficency?
More queens are produced than needed as some will need to be eliinated. The time it takes to rear gynes gives workers opportunitiy to decide as a group which ones are better.
What happens if larvae older than 5 days old are turned into queens?
They may show phenotypes of workers such as pollen baskets or different shaped mandibles
Why may queen cells be vibrated?
These queens that emerge after being vibrated at higher rates survived logner, elimaited more of her rivals and were more likely to become new queens.
What is the puprose of virgin queens being vibrated after emergence?
Workers will vibrate queens to steer them away from fights until they are more mature and have better fighting ability. Likewise vibrating could thwart attacks and help defend their favoured virigin queens.
What does temporal polygyny mean?
There are mutliple queens in the colony
Describe the gyne elimination stage
Queen assaniation is where they chew a hole in the queen cell and then sting the other queens before she emerges. Queens can duel too. The 3rd way to elimaite a queen is to go with a secondary swarm.
Describe queen duels
Queens will grab each other with their mandibles and try and sting one another.
They may eject the hindgut contents onto their rival which causes the dual to be interupted and alters the beahvur of workers towards the victim. These victims are crowded by workers and restricitng their movements although they do not kill the queen.
Workers are invovled in queen duels by allowing certain queens to fight or keep them trapped inside cells.
What age does the queen reach sexual maturity?
22 days after being laid
