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Genetic Analysis of the Drifting of Drones in Apis mellifera Using Multilocus DNA Fingerprinting
Author(s) -
Moritz Robin F. A.,
Neumann Peter
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
ethology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.739
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1439-0310
pISSN - 0179-1613
DOI - 10.1111/j.1439-0310.1996.tb01150.x
Subject(s) - drone , biology , dna profiling , honey bee , zoology , genetics , dna
The presence of non‐native drones in colonies of Apis mellifera was studied using multilocus DNA fingerprinting. Drones revealing a fingerprinting DNA banding pattern that did not correspond to the queen's genotype were classified as non‐native animals. As previously reported for the drifting of workers, the position of the hive in relation to neighbouring colonies and the orientation of the flight entrance towards the sun showed significant correlations to the number of drifted drones in a colony. The frequency of non‐native drones was low in central colonies (13 %) but high in marginal colonies (24 %). Furthermore, there was a significant correlation (r = 0.56) between the band‐sharing coefficient of the non‐native drones and the queen, and the number of drifted drones in the colony, which might indicate that genetically based nestmate recognition is involved in the drifting and/or acceptance of foreign drones in the colony.