LACK OF KIN RECOGNITION IN SWARMING HONEYBEES (APIS-MELLIFERA)

Honeybee colonies reproduce by colony fission and swarming. The primar y swarm leaves the nest with the mated mother queen. Further ''after-s warms'' can leave the nest. These are composed of virgin queens and si ster workers. Since all workers in the primary swarm have the same rel ationship to the mother queen, kin recognition cannot have any effect on the worker distribution in the swarm. Because of polyandry of the m other queen, the after-swarm is composed of super- and halfsister work ers of the virgin queen. In this case kin recognition might affect swa rm composition if workers increase their inclusive fitness by preferen tially investing in a supersister queen. The distribution of workers i n the mother colony, the primary and the after-swarm was analyzed usin g single-locus DNA fingerprinting in two colonies of the honeybee (Api s mellifera). The colonies were composed of 21 and 24 worker subfamili es because of multiple mating of the queen. The subfamily distribution in the mother colonies before swarming was significantly different fr om the subfamily frequencies in the primary swarm. This indicates diff erent propensities for swarming in the various subfamilies. The subfam ily distribution was also significantly different between the mother c olony and the after-swarm. There was however no significant difference between the subfamily composition of the primary and the after-swarm. The average effects of kin recognition on the distribution of the sub families in the two after-swarms were less than 2%. We conclude that c olony-level selection sets the evolutionary framework for swarming beh aviour.