Drones Haploid and Diploid.

**Greengage** · 28-01-2016, 09:23 AM

Ok you will have to bear with me as I try to get my head around this, Drones Normally develop from unfertilized eggs and are known as haploid. Theses drones will usually leave to mate with virgin queens, ok so far.
But sometimes you can get drones from fertilised eggs and these are known a Diploid now normally these are said not to survive until the end of larvae development as the bees in the hive recoginise them (HOW?) and canabilise them. But these drones if they were to survive would be Viable for mating I believe. Now the question.
1. Would it be possible to rear these drones to full adults.
2. How would you recoginise them from normal haploid drones.
3. What effect would they have on breeding if they mated with a queen.
4. How could it happen that a queen will lay a diploid drone.
Tks in advance, hope ther is an easy explanation.

**Black Comb** · 28-01-2016, 10:10 AM

As per usual, DAve Cushman's site has some useful background.

http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/dorian_nov07.html

**The Drone Ranger** · 28-01-2016, 10:11 AM

Hi GG
In another thread I linked to a video "queens I have know"
It covers the way they are produced
It doesn't cover how the bees recognise them I don't think
They have been raised and bred by Ruttner I think it was

Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

**The Drone Ranger** · 28-01-2016, 10:48 AM

Hi Black Comb
I read the Dave Cushman page thanks for that
Even after reading through a couple of times I still don't have a clear picture
It might be because the research suggested crossing was a good thing and that conflicted with DC's own BIBBA Amm leanings not sure

Or it might be that me (more likely)

Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

**Black Comb** · 28-01-2016, 12:42 PM

Well I think some of it is above my scientific grading (i.e. low) but I agree that where he states bees located against the same heather moor for 1,000 years would not benefit it seems to be at odds with the rest of the article.

Laidlaw and Page (Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding) does not say how the workers detect them, but does say that "they can be raised with some difficulty by removing them from the colony and feeding them royal jelly for 3 days before replacing them in drone cells. After 3 days, the workers cannot distinguish them from haploid males and will raise them normally. Diploid males, though viable, have testes of reduced size and produce diploid sperm that will not produce viable offspring. Therefore they are undesirable for breeding."

Connor in "Bee Sex Essentials" says they either fail to produce normal drone pheromone or produce a cannibalism substance.

]

**gavin** · 28-01-2016, 02:19 PM

I suspect that the heather moors discussion came from the impression that inbreeding in Amm is tolerated a bit better than in other races. Whether that is really true or not is not clear, but isolated small Amm populations do seem to get by. Some wild plants show this too - elsewhere they have strong mechanisms to promote outbreeding but in the wet and windy west of their range in Europe they have forms that inbreed or even avoid sex altogether and reproduce by other means. Sex in the wind and the wet isn't so easy

.

Back to diploid drones. Apparently workers only identify them as young larvae, not eggs nor older larvae.* There are changes in the cuticle that allow them to recognise that they don't belong in worker brood and should be removed.

* whereas worker-laid eggs are identified and removed as eggs. Seemingly they can smell the different aromas of their mothers.

Diploid drones make diploid sperm and - I imagine - can't father decent workers so are a drain on the resources of any colony headed by a queen they have inseminated, if they ever do so.

So:

1. Yes
2. Very difficult, sometimes they look just the same. One researcher found them to be 25% larger whereas another study found them to be the same.
3. I assume that they give inviable progeny but don't know how far they get. In other bees you very rarely find triploid workers.
4. By laying an egg with exactly the same version of the csd gene that is in the sperm she allows to fertilise it.

The mechanism relies on the csd gene. If a larvae has two different versions it is functionally female. If it has only one (because the egg was unfertilised or because the mother and father had identical versions) the larvae is functionally male. Usually the diploid ones which will be in worker brood are removed.

**Greengage** · 28-01-2016, 04:06 PM

Great tks for that info, so lets assume that the new virgin queen was fertilised by drones from her own hive she would produce diploid drones because they did not inherit two different sex alles from its parents, would I be correct in this assumption, and what would the workers be? (Sometimes I think too mutch)

**busybeephilip** · 28-01-2016, 05:23 PM

Greengage, the virgin mated or not, will produce drones from her own genetic background eg queen sex alleles = A/C her drones will be A and C, when she mates with drone D her female offspring will be A/D and C/D
hope that makes sense

if your A/C queen was fertalized with drones from the same hive she was reared from ie A and C then the worker prodgeny would be A/A, A/C, C/C, and C/A. In this case there would be 50% inbreeding and the hive would never survive without a lot of help. This is of course simplistic as there are many different drones available to mate with your queen ie B,D,E,F,G etc...

should of added that females with same sex alleles eg C/C are not viable as the bees normally destroy these eggs

**Greengage** · 28-01-2016, 07:32 PM

OK I can follow that tks, fascinating creatures, all this localised breeding is not what it is cut out to be. The more I know the more, the more I know some breeders are pulling my leg. Not to worry its all good knowledge dont know how they will react when I tell them breeding from a couple of hives might not be the best idea. Looks like we need lots of drones for genetic diversity.