Data from: Killing and replacing queen-laid eggs: low cost of worker policing in the honeybee

Worker honeybees, Apis mellifera, police each other’s reproduction by
killing worker-laid eggs. Previous experiments demonstrated that worker
policing is effective, killing most (∼98%) worker-laid eggs. However, many
queen-laid eggs were also killed (∼50%) suggesting that effective policing
may have high costs. In these previous experiments, eggs were transferred
using forceps into test cells, mostly into unrelated discriminator
colonies. We measured both the survival of unmanipulated queen-laid eggs
and the proportion of removal errors that were rectified by the queen
laying a new egg. Across 2 days of the 3-day egg stage, only 9.6% of the
queen-laid eggs in drone cells and 4.1% in worker cells were removed in
error. When queen-laid eggs were removed from cells, 85% from drone cells
and 61% from worker cells were replaced within 3 days. Worker policing in
the honeybee has a high benefit to policing workers because workers are
more related to the queen’s sons (brothers, r = 0.25) than sister workers’
sons (0.15). This study shows that worker policing also has a low cost in
terms of the killing of queen-laid eggs, as only a small proportion of
queen-laid eggs are killed, most of which are rapidly replaced.