Precise assessment of the number of patrilines and of genetic relatedness in honeybee colonies

Sociobiologists have long sought to estimate precisely the relatedness among members of social insect colonies because of the central significance of kinship in evolutionary and behavioural studies. By using microsatellites, we directly identified the 7-20 subfamilies (patrilines) present in five honeybee colonies belonging to three different subspecies (Apis mellifera mellifera, A. m. carnica and A. m. ligustica). By focusing further...