Data from: Subfamily-dependent alternative reproductive strategies in worker honey bees

Functional worker sterility is the defining feature of insect societies.
Yet, workers are sometimes found reproducing in their own or foreign
colonies. The proximate mechanisms underlying these alternative
reproductive phenotypes are key to understanding how reproductive altruism
and selfishness are balanced in eusocial insects. In this study we show
that in honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies the social environment of a
worker, i.e. the presence and relatedness of the queens in a worker’s
natal colony and in surrounding colonies, significantly influences her
fertility and drifting behaviour. Furthermore, subfamilies vary in the
frequency of worker ovarian activation, propensity to drift, and the kind
of host colony that is targeted for reproductive parasitism. Our results
show that there is an interplay between a worker’s subfamily, reproductive
state and social environment that substantially affects her reproductive
phenotype. Our study further indicate that honey bee populations show
substantial genetic variance for worker reproductive strategies,
suggesting that no one strategy is optimal under all the circumstances
that a typical worker may encounter.