Here is some info on what happens.
Basically, Thelytoky is... the ability to rear workers and queens utilising the eggs from laying workers, or in some cases virgin queens. This subject has in the past been considered a rarity that only occurs in the Cape bee, Apis mellifera capensis Escholtz, but it has been found in other strains.
While Thelytoky is exhibited strongly in Capensis, it does occur in all races of Apis mellifera, but in all except Capensis, it is very rare [1]. At Capensis levels it is destructive, but at levels of one in a million it is unlikely to do much harm and on the rare occasion that the gene pool is impoverished, it can maintain genes that might be otherwise lost.
It would be wrong to consider Thelytoky as an important issue, but studying the causes and effects gives us a little more insight into the feedback that helps to regulate natural selection. It exists and is stable at it's current levels, hopefully whatever keeps it that way will counteract any selection that may be done by humans that may try to increase it.
The diploid eggs laid by thelytokious bees are formed from haploid eggs that have a modified division process in the early stages of cell division...
Below is the process as described in Capensis
Production of parthenogenetic female eggs - thelytoky Verma and Ruttner (1983) showed that the secondary oocyte fuses with a polar body in the content of the unfertilized oocyte during meiosis. This automictic mechanism was suggested by Tucker (1958) and allows no combination of loci in the offspring, unless crossing over mediates the exchange of linkage groups. Moritz and Haberl (1994) could not detect crossing over in the formation of these diploid offspring, hence all offspring of a single capensis worker are genetically identical, mother and daughter therefore form a genetic clone. Ruttner(1988) claimed that only a single recessive allele, th, at one locus determines workers to perform thelytokious parthenogenesis. The thelytokious parthenogenesis has been explained as an adaptation to the harsh, wet, windy conditions where the queen is much more on a risk getting lost during her mating flights (Tribe 1983, Moritz and Kauhausen 1984, Moritz 1986). But paradoxically, the highest frequencies of matings occurs in months in which the winds are most intense (Allsopp and Hepburn 1997). Referring to the high mating frequency detected in A. m. capensis (Estoup et al. 1994, Moritz et al. 1996, Kryger 1997) the mating risk of the queens seems not to be higher than in European races.
Taken from...
Regulation of reproductive dominance hierarchiesin Apis mellifera capensis workers Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Gradesdoctor rerum naturalium (Dr. rer.nat.) vorgelegt der Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlich-Technischen Fakult?t (mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlicher Bereich) der Martin-Luther-Universit?t Halle-Wittenbergvon Frau Ute Simongeb. am: 11.08.1967 in Emden Gutachter1. Prof. R.F.A. Moritz2. Prof. N. Koeniger3. Prof. R.M. Crewe.
Thelytoky does occur in the European Apis mellifera strains, but with considerably lower frequency. In queenright colonies development of most worker ovaries is suppressed by the pheromone 9 - oxy - decenoic acid and possibly other substances emitted by the queen, [2] as well as substances possibly emitted by unsealed brood. [3] Workers can develop ovaries and some can lay eggs in the absence of both queen and open brood. [4]
European laying workers generally produce unfertilized haploid eggs that give rise to drones (if they develop at all). It is rare, but there are instances of both virgin queens and laying workers producing diploid eggs and those that develop, produce true female worker or queen bees. [5]
What causes Thelytoky? First a biological mechanism is needed to produce viable diploid eggs. Secondly various natural control systems need to be bye-passed or modified {see worker policing}. The biological mechanism of how the haploid egg becomes diploid is a gobbledygook sentence that I will reproduce here...
"Cape bee workers lay unfertilized diploid eggs because during ana-phase II the egg pronucleus and the central descendent of the first polar body fuse to form a diploid zygote nucleus." [6]
But the behaviour modification is more difficult to understand!
I offer various quotes and elements of the original text that I hope will aid understanding...
Topic: A queen from an unfertilized egg (Read 3748 times)