Behaviour and Genetics of Social Insects Laboratory, School of Biological Sciences A12, University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
J Hered. 2010 May-Jun;101(3):334-8. doi: 10.1093/jhered/esp112. Epub 2009 Nov 27.
Many apiculturally important traits of the honeybee have medium to high heritabilities and are therefore capable of strong response to selection. However, the natural mating system of honeybees makes it difficult to exclude unselected males from matings and necessitates expensive procedures like artificial insemination or isolated mating stations. By manipulating ambient light and temperature, an Australian queen breeder has developed a novel system that delays the flight time of selected queens and drones. To assess the efficacy of this "Horner system," drones and their assumed worker offspring were genotyped using microsatellite loci to test whether the workers were exclusively sired by the selected drones. The Horner system was found to provide at least 85% control of matings, equivalent to a 48% increase in the selection differential, when queens and drones are selected in a breeding program.
许多养蜂学上重要的蜜蜂特性具有中等至高度的遗传力，因此能够对选择做出强烈反应。然而，蜜蜂的自然交配系统使得很难将未被选择的雄性排除在交配之外，这就需要昂贵的程序，如人工授精或隔离交配站。通过操纵环境光和温度，一位澳大利亚蜂王繁殖者开发了一种新颖的系统，可以延迟选定蜂王和雄蜂的飞行时间。为了评估这种“霍纳系统”的效果，使用微卫星基因座对雄蜂及其假定的工蜂后代进行了基因型分析，以测试工蜂是否仅由选定的雄蜂受精。当在繁殖计划中选择蜂王和雄蜂时，发现霍纳系统提供了至少 85%的交配控制，相当于选择差的 48%的增加。
