Hey everyone, A break from winter prep for a biology lesson. I'm looking over a study guide for a beekeeping exam in the state of Virginia. One of the questions is "What are the two castes found in the colony and what are their major roles (functions)." My answer is that the castes in the...

Morphometric Identification of Queens, Workers and Intermediates in In Vitro Reared Honey Bees (Apis mellifera) In vitro rearing is an important and useful tool for honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) studies. However, it often results in intercastes between queens and workers, which are normally are...

Caste-Specific Differences in Hindgut Microbial Communities of Honey Bees (Apis mellifera) Host-symbiont dynamics are known to influence host phenotype, but their role in social behavior has yet to be investigated. Variation in life history across honey bee (Apis mellifera) castes may influence...

Dimorphic Ovary Differentiation in Honeybee (Apis mellifera) Larvae Involves Caste-Specific Expression of Homologs of Ark and Buffy Cell Death Genes The establishment of the number of repeated structural units, the ovarioles, in the ovaries is one of the critical events that shape caste...

Recipe for a Busy Bee: MicroRNAs in Honey Bee Caste Determination Social caste determination in the honey bee is assumed to be determined by the dietary status of the young larvae and translated into physiological and epigenetic changes through nutrient-sensing pathways. We have employed...

Sequence and Expression Characteristics of Long Noncoding RNAs in Honey Bee Caste Development – Potential Novel Regulators for Transgressive Ovary Size Division of labor in social insect colonies relies on a strong reproductive bias that favors queens. Although the ecological and evolutionary...

A Comparison of Digital Gene Expression Profiling and Methyl DNA Immunoprecipitation as Methods for Gene Discovery in Honeybee (Apis mellifera) Behavioral Genomic Analyses The honey bee has a well-organized system of division of labor among workers. Workers typically progress through a series of...

Fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy: