Levels of polyandry and intracolonial genetic relationships in Apis koschevnikovi

Adults of five Apis koschevnikovi colonies from Sabah, Malaysia (Borneo) we re collected into alcohol and within two days, transferred to liquid nitrog en. DNA was extracted, amplified with four, or in one case six, microsatell ite primer pairs or primers for a sequence tagged site, and genotypes for t hese loci were determined for 40 to 100 workers per colony. Four colonies w ere monogynous, one colony had worker daughters of two, probably highly rel ated, queens. For the monogynous colonies, the queen genotypes and the numb er and genotypes of males mated by each queen was inferred from the worker genotypes. The queens mated with 10 to 32 drones. The average number of obs erved matings was 16.3 +/- 10.5 and the average number of effective matings was 10.5 +/- 8.4. The within-colony genetic relatedness was 0.31 +/- 0.03. The fitness advantages of genetic variance are discussed.