Laying worker bee

The After Weisel is a bienenkundlicher, but especially beekeeping technical term. After Weisel often also referred to as Drohnenmütterchen.

Description

The very large majority of a bee colony consists of worker bees, which are females whose ovaries are not fully formed. This is due to the diet during development to finished insect. Furthermore, the queen bee is constantly a pheromone, called queen substance, from which triggers processes that prevents the ripening of eggs in the workers.

When a nation loses its queen in the growing season, so is queenless, a new queen can be made of the existing young worker brood used ( imkerlich: recreated ) are. The situation is different, however, from winter or early spring. At these seasons is not a breed for a Nachschaffung available. Due to the lack of queen substance eggs of some workers begin after a few days in the ovaries to develop, which then begin to lay too. As these, After Weisel said, bees but no seminal vesicle, let alone have a seed bank, have their eggs only a haploid set of chromosomes to and from this parthenogenesis ( virgin birth ) occur only drones.

Even in an intact colony, with full-fledged and healthy queen, it is already to the fact that few individual bees ( about one in a thousand ) place despite the inhibition by the queen substance eggs. However, these are then immediately removed from the other workers and thus can not be discovered in a through review of beekeepers. These bees still is not " followers " to brood care, etc. available.

Unlike a bee colony with individual after the queen bees, it can also lead to a drone or Buckelbrütigkeit when a queen in people is present, but was not mated, or lacking a sufficient seed bank more. In these cases, however, occur much more brood cells. The After Weisel, however, can only lay a few eggs, which they attach to the cell wall because of their shorter abdomen. A queen on the other hand always puts the egg from the cell surface.

On occasion, Nachschwärmen to the emergence of After the queen bees when a young, still virgin queen does not return from their Begattungsflug.

Peoples with After queen bees perish, since no renewal of the substance takes place more workers. In the beekeeping practice, such peoples are mostly dissolved. The usual addition of a new queen bee can only be achieved by additional effort, since the Drohnenmütterchen not visually distinguished from the other bees, and therefore can not be removed. Dangerous for the added Queen are not the anal queen bees themselves, but the educated in their environment " followers ".

Female parthenogenesis in Kapbiene

A special feature is the southernmost representative (race ) of the Western honey bee Kapbiene (Am capensis ) dar. In their workers are laying eggs in a position in which, despite parthenogenesis again females arise, so the colony not perish.

• Beekeeping