Data from: A quantitative study of worker reproduction in queenright colonies of the Cape honey bee Apis mellifera capensis

Reproduction by workers is rare in honey bee colonies that have an active
queen. By not producing their own offspring and preventing other workers
from producing theirs, workers are thought to increase their inclusive
fitness due to their higher average relatedness towards queen-produced
male offspring compared with worker-produced male offspring. But there is
one exception. Workers of the Cape honey bee Apis mellifera capensis are
able to produce diploid female offspring via thelytokous parthenogenesis
and thus produce clones of themselves. As a result, worker reproduction
and tolerance towards worker-produced offspring is expected to be more
permissive than in arrhenotokous (sub)species where worker offspring are
male. Here we quantify the extent to which A. m. capensis workers
contribute to reproduction in queenright colonies using microsatellite
analyses of pre-emergent brood. We show that workers produced 10.2% of
workers and 0.48% of drones. Most of the workers' contribution
towards the production of new workers coincided with the colonies
producing new queens during reproductive swarming.