The anarchist workers insisted on multiplying
bee colony In a normal hive, a chemical signal "turns off" the workers' ovaries
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/dvorim1.html
The beehive is known as a model of order and efficiency. But there are hives that deviate from the track. The normal order in the hive states that the queen is the one who reproduces and the workers are the ones who do all the hard work. But at the International Congress of Genetics, which took place recently in Melbourne, Dr. Ben Oldroyd from the University of Sydney told about a beehive in New Zealand, where the familiar order was violated and the workers began to reproduce as well.
Oldroyd, who became aware of the unusual hive in 1994, is now raising a lineage of anarchic bees from the same hive and is trying to find a genetic explanation for their behavior. Normally, the queen and her larva send chemical signals that tell the workers to "turn off" their ovaries. Oldroyd hypothesized that the signals work by influencing the production of an essential protein.
To find out which protein it is, Oldroyd removed RNA messenger from the ovaries of anarchist workers and ordinary workers. Messenger RNA is the substance used as a template for building a protein in the process of decoding the genetic material (DNA), which leads to the production of a new protein. Analyzing the messenger RNA allowed Oldroyd to determine which genes were active in the bees' ovaries.
The initial results showed that in the ovaries of the infertile workers, a gene known as "Alien" was activated at high levels. The same gene was activated at low levels in the ovaries of the anarchists. This gene plays a role in the reproductive process of other insects and is active at a high level of expression even in queens that do not lay eggs. Oldroyd believes that it is possible that the garden was intended to "turn off" the reproductive mechanism - and thereby destroy order in a healthy hive.
