Comparing the head transcriptome of honey bees at 9 days old and 1 day old.

Ten mated honeybee queens of the same age were inserted randomly into ten hives as one queen existed in each hive. The combs containing the last pupal stage were transferred into screened cages. They placed into an incubator with 75-80% relative humidity and a temperature at 32 C until metamorphosis into the adult workers. Newly emerged honeybees were marked using red and 9 days old bees marked white colors and transferred into the parent hives. Then, the red and white marked workers were gathered at 9 days old and 1 day old, respectively. 100 1-days-old-honeybees and 100 9-days-old-honeybees selected from each hive. The heads of selected workers were detached and pooled for RNA extraction in liquid nitrogen. RNA extractions were performed by RNeasy Mini Kit-QIAGEN. Total RNA sequencing of two RNA samples were done with an Illumina HiSeq.