Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
DCAs are mysterious affairs, and much scientific research has gone into trying to
find out why they are where they are and exactly what their boundaries are. There
is a DCA over Selborne Common in Hampshire that was first described by the Rev.
Gilbert White in the 1700s. It still reappears in the same place each year and can
easily be heard on a fine summer's day. In these DCAs, drones mate with a queen. If
they pass an invisible boundary inches away, they won't. Why not? How do drones,
which are new each year, know where they are? How do virgin queens know where
they are? This is a subject ripe for further investigation, the results of which would aid
commercial beekeepers immensely, and this is another opportunity for those interested
in beekeeping - research on the subject. Why not combine your hobby with a career as
a scientist?
Participating in multiple sex
Research has shown that worker bees back in the colony will pay more attention to a
queen that has mated with a large number of drones than to one that has mated with
fewer, and that they will more readily accept her. The multiple-mated queen and the
queen mated fewer times have been found to have pheromonal differences, behavioural
differences and queen/worker interaction differences. In other words, the more matings
the better. If a beekeeper is introducing an expensively purchased queen to a colony, this
is an important matter, and scientists therefore hope to devise a test so that beekeepers
can know the quality of the queen they buy from a queen rearer.
Once the queen returns to her nest, she will have enough stored sperm in her
spermatheca to last her for her lifetime, and she will become an egg-laying machine able
to lay up to 2,000 eggs a day in her prime. During her 'reign' she will exude chemical
messages called pheromones that are passed around the colony by bee-to-bee contact.
Worker bees of a certain age groom, clean and feed the queen, who is unable to carry
out these tasks herself, and it is these attendants that initiate the passing around of
queen pheromones. The most important of these attendants tell the bees that the queen
is there; that she is fit and healthy and is laying eggs. These pheromones also inhibit the
enlargement of worker bee ovaries.
