# white eyed drone



## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

This may be a pretty common mutation but its the first I've seen. Please excuse the dirty fingernails.....I've been working bees.


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## NW IN Beekeeper (Jun 29, 2005)

*This is not a good sign...*

Well you wanted to talk about inbreeding... here it is. 

White eyes are a sign of inbreeding. 
It covered very nicely here: 

http://members.aol.com/glennapiar/oddball.html#anchor2831823

This is a recessive gene that is likely passed by the queen (as the white eye drones are blind and unlikely to mate). 

I would inspect this hive a few more times and see if other white-eyed drones are present. If I see any others, I'd be curious to inspect the brood to see if you have any that are emerging. 

I would highly recommend against using this queen as breeding stock until I was assured that drone was a straggler from another hive (but being blind, this is highly unlikely). 

-Jeff


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## NW IN Beekeeper (Jun 29, 2005)

PS.. I have (or had) one in the freezer like that too. I planned to epoxy it for demonstration purposes.
(great now I have to go look and try to find it!)


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## NW IN Beekeeper (Jun 29, 2005)

*How'd it happen?*

I found my specimen.... 

I suppose the important thing to discuss is how about I came to discover mine, and maybe it might be enlightening, not just to this post, but to another about inbreeding and yearly queen replacement. 

The white-eyed drone that I found was from a cut-out. 
This cut was from one barn (Barn 1 - w/1 Queen). 
Not even 100' away was another barn with at least a double queen colony (Barn 2 - w/2 Queens).
Then across the street about two blocks NW was another colony in a house (House 1 - w/Min 1 Queen)).
And about two blocks away NE was another colony. (House 2 - w/Min 1 Queen)

The jist of the situation was, I had five colonies all within a square quarter mile of each other. These were all unmanaged colonies that may have resided in these locations to upto eight years. It would not be unlikely that colonies were sister colonies, casting off brother drones, or at the very least of very similar blood linage. An inbreeding cess pool to say the least. 

Now the problem becomes, determining which colony is inbred enough to produce blind drones? 
To worsen the situation, queens with the recessive gene will not have white-eyes, and will still pass on the gene to both female and male offspring! You can't see the defect in females! 

So when reviewing:

http://members.aol.com/glennapiar/oddball.html#anchor2831823

which contains mendel charts to describe the genetic transfer of the defect, one can see that one defective drone can effect *HALF* the population. A defective queen will always effect *HALF OR MORE* (up to 75%!). 

In this situation, your only option is to requeen these hives with a distant source of queens and then prevent the original drones from saturating any mating yards that queen rearing maybe in progress. (queen excluders over the bottom board but under the broodnest work well for trapping drones, but need cleaned of clogged dead drones frequently).

The condition of white-eyes appears "cute" on the surface, but when you research it, you see how awful an impact it can have on your stocks. 
It's actually very sad, in my case it spoiled five potential colonies.
It's certainly one of nature's "red flags". 

-Jeff


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

As luck would have it this colony was a cutout from an isolated barn that was scheduled to be bulldozed. There may have been other feral colonies around. The owner asked if I wanted the bees before he demolished the building. It was clearly a long established, thriving colony as it had a huge network of comb; comb that was obviously old. As this is the only drone I've seen with these symptoms, I have to wonder if it is the result of a mutation rather than a recessive gene. Certainly, if it is from a recessive gene I would expect to see half of the drones in that colony with the symptoms. Right? Furthermore, I'm not sure I understand how this is a product of inbreeding. If the resulting drones are blind they aren't likely to mate with any queens. So, how do they pass the gene on? According to the link with Glenn Apiaries 'If both the mother and father contribute a white eye gene, white eyed workers and queens result.' If this were to happen, even ignoring the fact that the father would have to have been blind and unable to mate in the first place, how would it become a larger problem? I mean, if the resulting queen were blind, how would she make any mating flights? I think this may be a bit more complicated than simple genetics.


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## JBJ (Jan 27, 2005)

There may still be great genetics to harvest, even in an inbred line. Many famous lines of queens are maintained via two separate inbred lines, which are daughters from one or both of these lines are then hybridized to produce proliferous and vigorous hybrids.


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## Nick Noyes (Apr 28, 2005)

I got an A.I. minnesota hyg. breeder queen that throws drones with yellow eyes. Very freaky when you pull a frame out to inspect. She was not a good breeder queen.


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## JBJ (Jan 27, 2005)

Nick, did you see any similar traits in the daughters? I was thinking about the Midnight and Starline bees that were hybrids crossed from maintained inbred lines if I recall correctly.


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## Nick Noyes (Apr 28, 2005)

Yes the daughters drones had yellow eyes also. They also had some other undesirable characteristics like being very mean. 
I am not picking on the minn. hyg. program. I think they are on to something. We just got a bad one and she is now out of the program.
At the present time I am picking breeders from our better hives hopeing to get something that works well for our operation. We still buy about 5,000 queens so we shouldn't see any inbreeding in the near future. We raise mutts and we like them.


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## JBJ (Jan 27, 2005)

I had a similar experience with the Meanasota Hyg breeders I purchased in the late 90s. We did not get any observable mutations but they were testy. We are have the best luck with our mutts also. Our best bees have been propagated since 2000 when fulvalinate quit working and we started selecting Survivor stock. We still trade stocks with other like minded beeks and occasional purchase breeders. We may finally play with II next season.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

beemandan said:


> This may be a pretty common mutation but its the first I've seen. Please excuse the dirty fingernails.....I've been working bees.


You call those fingernails dirty? What were you working, a typewriter?


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## Colleen O. (Jun 5, 2012)

Nick Noyes said:


> I got an A.I. minnesota hyg. breeder queen that throws drones with yellow eyes. Very freaky when you pull a frame out to inspect. She was not a good breeder queen.


I was peeking in an observation window today and saw a drone with yellow eyes. Dredged up this old post because I think this drone had some Minnesota Hygienic parentage. My original queen was a Minnesota Hygienic but these were daughters so Minnesota Hygienic X Missouri Mutt. 

I requeened all but one on August 12th with Ferguson Buckfasts but in one nuc I had a failed push-in cage. When I checked on the 17th to remove the empty queen cages the bees had made queen cells from the old queen's eggs so I destroyed those and put in a bar of eggs from one of the other nucs that had accepted their new queen. The bar had fresh eggs but also some young larvae that ended up being drones and which I think were from the old bees. (I think the nuc was just starting to go laying worker when I finally got the new queen.) This drone looked newly hatched so it is close but I think the math puts it before the Buckfast queens.

I did keep one of the Minnesota Hygienic X Missouri Mutt queens so I will watch them for more yellow eyed drones. Interestingly that queen looks very similar to the new Buckfast queens except she is more a leather color with tiger stripes and the Buckfast queens have a more yellow base with the stripes. I guess I will have to watch this newly hatched Buckfast daughter queen's drones too because I have plenty of the old queen's drones around that could be mating with her. I know she hatched last Saturday because there was a beautiful big queen cell I could see in the window and Friday it was fine but Saturday morning it had a big hole in the side where the new virgin queen must have stung her rival to death.


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## Colleen O. (Jun 5, 2012)

Oops, didn't realize this was from the photo gallery when it came up on my search and I posted to it. I didn't get a picture of the drone but I suppose I could post pics of my queens.


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