Shift Work has a Genetic Basis in Honeybee Pollen Foragers (Apis mellifera L.)

Division of labour is a fundamental property of any social system. The specialization of different individuals in different tasks increases the overall work performance and efficiency. Specialization is thought to be the very foundation of the success of human societies but also in complex colonies of social insects. In human societies an advanced form of division of labour, especially since the industrialisation, is shift work, where individuals perform the same task but in subsequent cohorts in time. Although social insects can measure and are aware of time, shift work has not been documented in colonies of social insects so far. We observed foragers of two honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies (approximately 140 workers each) and genotyped them with microsatellite DNA markers. We determined paternity and assigned them to the various subfamilies in the colony to test whether there is genetic variance for shift work in foraging honeybees. We could show that the patriline identity of the foragers had a significant effect on foraging either in the morning or evening. Individual foragers differed in their preference for the “early” or “late” shift, and shift work indeed existed in the colony.