Sex Determination inApis Cerana Indica

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Abstract
Each of 11 Apis cerana indica queens was mated instrumentally to 5–29 of her brothers. Any queen mated to more than 15 brothers laid only fertilized eggs in worker cells. Unlike A. mellifera, almost all A. cerana larvae produced by sibling-mated queens survived their first day of larval life. The youngest larvae were collected from worker cells for microscopical investigation. Examinations of slides prepared from 572 larvae (originating from all the sibling-mated queens) showed that 27·4% were drones, most of which must have developed from fertilized eggs. This percentage is close to the expected 25%, and it is concluded that the sex determination mechanism in A. cerana is similar to that in A. mellifera, where there is one sex locus X with several alleles. Heterozygosity results in females, homozygosity in diploid males, and hemizygosity in haploid males. The fate of diploid drone larvae in the colony is different in A. cerana and A. mellifera.

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