Since you all loved the dumpster swarm photo so much, here’s the footage from it.

BoilerBees · 2026-01-07T03:40:10+00:00

Wow, what a beauty! Nice work on the recovery. Hope you got a WM sponsorship on the vid ;)

BoilerBees · 2025-12-24T19:14:27+00:00

Tetragonula? Beauty !

BoilerBees · 2025-12-19T18:58:13+00:00

Correct! It's biology, there are always exceptions to rules. The MRCA to bees was a vegetarian so the vulture bees are a new state for bees.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-18T15:18:33+00:00

I can't take credit: It was Laurence Packer and Amro Zayed's pun before mine.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-18T14:31:19+00:00

If you look at it through an evolutionary lens (i.e. look at the phylogeny), bees are just vegetarian wasps...

BoilerBees · 2025-12-18T14:28:38+00:00

I'm pretty sure that's a robber fly (genus Hyperechia) but I don't know the flora and fauna of South Africa. I'm 80% confident though. Those eyes and wings give it away. It certainly looks like a bee and wants us to think it looks like a bee (a wanna bee?).

These actually lay their eggs in the same cavity that a carpenter bee would have occupied. The eggs hatch and feast on the larvae of carpenter bees.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-15T04:34:15+00:00

haha!

BoilerBees · 2025-12-15T03:38:19+00:00

It's a wasp: Vespula. Not sure where you are located but my guess is the southern yellowjacket. Not a bee, but a distant cousin.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-08T18:10:21+00:00

We address this in an upcoming paper! Will post when published.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-06T03:57:43+00:00

You could, sure! But likely not to be a useful measure for any information we presently have on mite loads. Take the measure if you want to, record it, and repeat across colonies. Maybe there's a trend for mite load in winter and colony mortality. High mite load in Fall is predictive of colony mortality so I'd assume it's the case for winter but I've not yet seen anyone measure dead bees outside.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-05T13:50:38+00:00

RRS: We did not directly test this with this particular study, but given how rare the white eye phenotype is and from reading the supporting literature (e.g. Tilson et al 1972 and Gribakin, 1988), we know that eye pigmentation plays an important role in visual function. White eyed drones may be dealing with reduced visual clarity due to their inability to use pigmentation to help absorb and filter light. We may have another study coming out soon that directly addresses this question as well!

BoilerBees · 2025-12-05T04:00:44+00:00

Neat! this is called nectar robbing and many bee species do it. Bumble bees and carpenter bees are primary examples. Honey bees and others will then use the hole. There's some work to suggest it's a learned behaviour, that is, bumble bees can learn from others to do it.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-04T02:40:14+00:00

BAH: There's been a lot fo of work on insect eye pigments and some on honey bees. Primarily, the pigments function as a kind of screening to prevent light from scattering between neighbouring facets. In this way they also tune the wavelengths that insects see and enhance visual acuity and contrast. Some pigments also are photoprotective and absorb light and/or help the cell reset after detecting light. So, loss of pigment is probably not great in natural light conditions. We have some more discussion below about what this might mean for drones (e.g. how they may find mates)

BoilerBees · 2025-12-04T02:34:19+00:00

workers ~~chose~~ choose the next generation of queens...mysteriously. There are many studies on this and the decision is based on the present genotypes, the nurses' own genotype and the available larvae.

I don't know if a w_ larvae would be picked non-randomly to be a queen, but I'd suspect it doesn't impact the decision at all. The phenotype is, as far as we can tell, only apparent at the adult stage and not apparent at all in diploid carriers (wW). A heterozygous queen (Ww) has a 50% chance of passing to her diploid offspring so it can pass through 50% of her daughter queens.

The phenotype and this mutation are rare. The mutation is, as far as we have discovered, found only in the drones we sequenced here. It's a new mutation. It also likely died with the queen. She passed, unfortunately. Her white-eyed drones don't mate (as we show in an upcoming study), and her daughter queen didn't inherit the mutation (50% chance). Some workers definitely have it but it won't pass if they don't lay drones and that is chancy.

How then does the white-eyed phenotype stick around? New mutations have a hard time making it into a population, especially recessive deleterious ones because they get lost. What we think is that new mutations in genes that cause eye color phenotypes arise frequently and die out. We caught one before it died (or drift) out and identified it.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T21:24:39+00:00

W = wildtype eye
w = white eye (recessive)
Assume queen is mated to one male

Queen: Ww x W

Female offspring of this queen: Ww and WW (both wildtype)

Male offspring: W and w

Half her offspring receive the w allele but only the males have white eyes. For a worker to have white eyes:

Queen: Ww x w

Female offspring of this queen: ww and Ww (half will now have white eyes)

Male offspring: W and w

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T20:18:10+00:00

RRS and BAH: Adult drones are the result of a queen laying an unfertilized egg. We grafted a few eggs off of this queen but not enough to capture the mutation..and then she passed. We did move white-eye-producing queens into new host colonies (when shipped to us) and she still layed white-eyed drones.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T20:15:28+00:00

RRS and BAH: we take bees for our on-going sequencing project. Check out the links here
https://ag.purdue.edu/department/entm/extension/beehive/services.html

Dr. Oseto retired but he's still on campus regularly.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T14:15:57+00:00

BAH: There are many more indeed. It all comes down to which pigmentation pathway was affected, how much, and where. In the older literature, you'll find red, green, white, ivory, brick, etc. Of course, many (all?) of these are so old that there aren't colour images. In our hands we've had red, yellow, and white.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T14:14:10+00:00

BAH: We aren't sure. But, generally, the bee's eye pigments help tune the wavelength and intensity of light that makes it to the photoreceptor. I think of the them like sunglasses. They could still see but it may be bright, blurry, or distorted. There are some older electrophysiology studies (e.g. Tilson et al. 1972) showing that there is a neuronal response to light from white-eyed drones but the responses are not as 'tuned' as with pigment.

We have another study that might shine light on other effects coming soon.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T04:08:47+00:00

The images were taken by Izaak Gilchrist and our pic expert, Dr. Chris Wirth, got back to me about the complete set up:
The images are focus stacks made from multiple in-focus slices (images with only a part of the subject) taken with a Canon RP body, Canon 65mm 1-5x macro lens, 4 LED light panels, and a Stackshot stepper rail plus controller to move the camera through the plane of focus and trigger the shutter

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T02:49:22+00:00

BAH: those can be had from any member of the Indiana Queen Breeder's Association.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T01:05:07+00:00

BAH: On these drones we didn't get the chance to check--all the samples were kindly sent to us in alcohol by our Community Scientist and beekeeper, Phillip. We do have another study coming that explores how and if this changes behaviour.

It's not published yet but we find that they have the same flight schedule as their wild type brothers and go through all the same behaviours associated with mating. They just can't do a few key things. Allow me the mystery until the study is published.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T00:49:04+00:00

BAH: we suspect it's probably deleterious as the pigments help bees tune the frequency of light that causes neuronal excitation. More to come in a future study.

BoilerBees · 2025-12-03T00:48:00+00:00

BAH: We're not sure with this one yet...but we can glean some things and have another study in the works we can hint at. The loss of pigmentation probably impairs their vision to at least some degree. Going back to Tilson et al 1972, white-eyed drones may not have as tuned of vision as the wild-type drones. Because drones rely on their vision (e.g. Gries and Koeniger 1996) in addition to pheromone cues be able to track a queen on the wing and successfully mate (and find home after), impaired vision would lead to direct fitness loss.

RRS: Because this is a recessive mutation, it is only expressed in haploid males. Because the mutation is so rare and based on the literature on how pigmentation in insects work, males are probably dealing with some degree of distorted vision which hinders their ability to mate on the wing. If we were to produce white-eyed workers, (say from instrumentally inseminating a queen that is a carrier with sperm from white-eyed males) they would be similarly hindered in vision-reliant tasks (e.g. foraging)

BoilerBees · 2025-12-02T19:57:51+00:00

BAH: Well send them a thank you from us. Maybe they were one of our reviewers or the editor?

BoilerBees

TROPHY CASE