QUEEN DEVELOPMENTAL TIME AS A FACTOR IN THE AFRICANIZATION OF EUROPEAN HONEY-BEE (HYMENOPTERA, APIDAE) POPULATIONS

The development times of daughter queens from African and European mat rilines mated to both African and European drones were recorded. Regar dless of the matriline, African patriline queens completed their devel opment and emerged 8-12 h before those with European paternity. A prob ability distribution function derived from the emergence time data ind icated that because of differences in development times between patril ines, the probability that an African patriline queen will emerge Ist can be 2-3 times greater than the proportion of the African patrilines in the colony population. Because the Ist queen to emerge has the bes t chance of becoming the colony's new queen, differences in queen deve lopment times between African and European patrilines might be a facto r contributing to the asymmetrical gene now between African and Europe an honey bee, Apis mellifera L., populations, and the eventual loss of European nuclear markers and behavioral attributes in European honey bee populations where African bees have migrated.