The influence of queen age and quality during queen replacement in honeybee colonies

Honeybee, Apis mellifera, colonies replace their queens by constructing man y queen cells and then eliminating supernumerary queens until only one rema ins. The ages of the queens and the variation in their reproductive potenti al are important factors in the outcome of such events. Selection would fav our colonies that requeen as quickly as possible to minimize the brood hiat us, therefore selecting for queens reared from older larvae. Conversely, re productive potential (queen 'quality') is maximized by rearing queens from younger larvae. This potential trade-off was tested during two phases of qu een replacement, namely queen rearing and polygyny reduction. Our results s uggest that queen age is a significant element during both queen rearing an d polygyny reduction, whereas queen quality, at least to the magnitude test ed in this experiment, has little impact on the outcome of either process. The rate of queen replacement therefore appears to be an important factor i n the honeybee life cycle, and further mechanisms of potential importance d uring this life history transition are discussed. (C) 2000 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.