Self Cloning Bees

news.sky.com...

Not strictly cryptozoology, but it is very weird.

"Over the past three decades, a single individual bee has successfully created millions of clones of herself thanks to hitting a bizarre genetic jackpot.

This growing army of clones poses a serious risk to the hives of the African lowland honey bee, 10% of which are collapsing every year, as the colonies become filled with clones that consume their resources refuse to share in the work.

Scientists have described the bee's mechanism of reproduction as "incredible" and have traced the lineage back to a single worker bee that lived in 1990, according to research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B."

Apparently this was a feak mutation, which eventually will lead to the species dying out.

So, these bees have hit the "genetic jackpot" once, whats the odds on them hitting it again? Its less the luck of the draw, and more a genetic predisposition to freaky mutations.

Equally, if this has occured in one bee species, it must be possible in another. In which case, what would be the impact on us, eg The bees die out and the plants don't grow, and the food chain fails.

Also if this happens with bees, what other animals/insects could 'randomly' mutate this way? And was it really random, 1990 was around the start of genome reaseach, maybe someone had some early doors practice playing God.

a reply to: Doxanoxa

That's pretty amazing. It's surprising they've made it this long, all it would take is one disease and they'd be wiped out. Like the bananas that used to be exported back before the 60's.

Here's the link to the original study and a link to another news source that gives a bit more information about the study done on the bees.

The bee’s will keep dying and they will still blame man and find a new and inventive tax to impose in order to save the bees. The money generated will go directly into a fund for killing bees.

a reply to: Doxanoxa

I read an article on this last week or so, very strange... Do not give our handlers any ideas here!

In 1990 a bee learned to clone herself

Yeah sure I believe they have not been messing with the genes of the bees like the mosquitos!

This growing army of clones poses a serious risk to the hives of the African lowland honey bee, 10% of which are collapsing every year, as the colonies become filled with clones that consume their resources refuse to share in the work.

They sound like the woke liberal democrats of the bee civilization. Are these bees white by any chance? They are putting African bees at risk and collapsing their hives, so they must be white liberal democrat bees.

a reply to: Athetos

Love it. Feel like you can make it into an Adlib.

I hope everyone realises that the "her" in a bee colony IS the Queen. Therefore ALL descendants of that hive are the Queens offspring. Now the only way "cloning" could take place is if the Queen was asexual, not needing another bee to produce off spring.

a reply to: crayzeed

Looks pretty much the like tbats the way of it I'm afraid - from the same article:


"If you take the queen away, for instance, instead of raising a new queen like other bee species might, these bees will just start laying eggs themselves," Professor Oldroyd told Live Science.

"There are also cells, called queen cells, where the queen lays the eggs containing future queens. It's perfectly possible for a worker to fly in from another colony, or one of the existing workers in that colony to come and replace that queen egg with one of their clone eggs. That way, they can be genetically reincarnated as a queen."

It strikes me as both 'unnatural' and scary.

a reply to: Doxanoxa
Ah, but the thing is if they are all queens where are the workers? It's the workers that do the business. Yeah the queen is needed for the continuation of the swarm/hive, but it's the workers that make the swarm/hive.

a reply to: crayzeed

Yes, thats an issue.

Apparently the upshot is a bit like reading quotes cut from the article by someone else, not reading the article yourself.