Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
tions, and then inbred lines were crossed to look for line combinations
that combined well and produced superior stock. Immediately it be-
came obvious that honey bees suf ered severely from inbreeding; the
viability of the larvae decreased to where half the larvae died. Otto Mack-
ensen, a bee researcher for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, immedi-
ately suspected that this must be related to the complementary sex deter-
mination found by Whiting in
B. hebetor.
He proposed that homozygosity
in bees was lethal rather than producing sterile diploid males, as oc-
curred in
Bracon.
Jerzy Woyke, a Polish bee researcher and geneticist,
performed some elegant experiments and showed that in fact the homo-
zygous diploid male larvae do not die from the ef ects of lethal genes.
Instead, these larvae are eaten by nurse bees during their i rst few
hours of life. h ey produce some kind of “eat me” cue that results in
their removal from the cell in which they are developing (Figure 4.2).
Figure 4.2.
Frame containing capped brood. h e empty cells contained diploid
male larvae that were removed by workers. h
is pattern is called
shot brood.
Photo by Kim Fondrk.
