Determination of colony foundation success and colony developmental patterns in groups of different super sister bombus terrestris queen

The year round rearing procedure of B. terrestris involves some main stages: colony foundation, obtaining of young queens and males, mating and diapause control. Success of these stage are affected by environmental conditions, physiological properties and genetic structure of the queens. Because of the B. terrestris queens mate once, female individuals in their colonies are super sister. There is a 75% genetic relatedness between the super sister young queens. This study was conducted to compare the colony foundation performances and colony development patterns of different super sister queen groups and to determine the effect of genotype on variation between the B. terestris colonies. A total of 8 B. terrestris colonies that produced males and young queens were used. Males were obtained from 4 colonies (M: male colony group), while young queens were obtained from other 4 colonies (Q: queen colony group). Super sister queens produced by same colony (Q1) were mated with males produced by other same colony (M1). Similarly, queens produced in Q2, Q3 and Q4 colonies were mated with males produced in M2, M3 and M4 colonies, respectively. At the end of the mating process, four different super sister queen groups were designed. After the diapause duration, colony foundation performances of 120 queens (thirty queens for each group) and colony development traits were examined. Significant differences were determined between the super sister queen groups in terms of some ritical traits such as copulation duration, weight of queens before and after diapause, competition point, total number of young queens and males. Results showed that quality and colony foundation succes of queens and colony development patterns can vary depending on maternal colony which young queens produced.