TROPHALLAXIS AND GENETIC VARIANCE OF KIN RECOGNITION IN HONEY-BEES, APIS-MELLIFERA L

Individual honey bee workers were tested in a trophallactic bioassay for their kin discrimination abilities. One bee (the donor) was fed with 20 μl dyed sugar syrup. The donor was placed into a group of six familiar and six unfamiliar workers of various degrees of relationship to the familar bees. Unrestricted trophallaxis was allowed for 2h. The amount of food transferred was photometrically determined. The majority of workers were able to discriminate between unfamiliar related and unrelated workers and preferentially fed related workers. Donor workers of different patrilines of the same colony showed a significant variability for kin discrimination. A sibling analysis on workers of sister queens revealed a substantial additive genetic variance for this character (39% of total variance) which is higher than heritability estimates of characters related to fitness known for other organisms. © 1990 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.