The Hatchability of ‘Lethal’ Eggs in a two Sex-Allele Fraternity of Honeybees

Abstract

Queens producing scattered brood were obtained by sibling mating for two or three generations. A total of 33 521 individual observations, together with counts of 9634 eggs and larvae, were carried out on the brood these queens produced. Only about 50% of the brood normally survived. But when the eggs were screened and left in normal conditions in the hive, or kept in favourable conditions outside it, nearly all of them hatched. The hatchability of eggs of these queens was in fact similar to that of eggs laid by queens producing normal brood. Counts made every three hours on brood of low survival rate showed that these eggs also hatched when left unscreened in the hive, but that a high proportion of the larvae disappeared within the next few hours. In a parallel study with brood killed by freezing, dead larvae in the hive disappeared very quickly, but dead eggs could remain up to 5 days. Brood of low survival rate seemed to disappear more quickly than normal brood, so the homozygosity of locus X does not cause the eggs to be lethal.