question: How do bees avoid inbreeding? Or genetic mutations if not?
comment: A queen bee will mate with as many males as she possibly can. She then stores their sperm and uses this wide array of genetic material to produce new eggs; thus, a colony's workers all have the same mother, but a variety of fathers. Bees also use a huge amount of what is called *genetic recombination*. This basically shuffles the genes in an offspring, producing traits which were not found in either parent. This produces a great deal of genetic variation.
passages: Congregation areas can be located by attaching a virgin queen (in a cage) to a balloon floating above ground. The person then moves around, taking note of where drones are attracted to the caged queen. Congregation areas are not found closer than 90 m from an apiary, and congregation areas located farther away from apiaries receive more drones. In a congregation area, drones accumulate from as many as 200 colonies, with estimates of up to 25,000 individual drones. This broad mixing of drones is how a virgin queen can ensure she will receive the genetic diversity needed for her colony. By flying to congregation areas further away from her colony, she further increases the probability of outbreeding.
   Once either process has begun, the old queen leaves the hive with the hatching of the first queen cells. She leaves accompanied by a large number of bees, predominantly young bees (wax-secretors), who form the basis of the new hive. Scouts are sent out from the swarm to find suitable hollow trees or rock crevices. As soon as one is found, the entire swarm moves in. Within a matter of hours, they build new wax brood combs, using honey stores that the young bees have filled themselves with before leaving the old hive. Only young bees can secrete wax from special abdominal segments, and this is why swarms tend to contain more young bees. Often a number of virgin queens accompany the first swarm (the "prime swarm"), and the old queen is replaced as soon as a daughter queen mates and begins laying. Otherwise, she is quickly superseded in the new home.
   As Africanized bees migrate into regions, hives with an old or absent queen can become hybridized by cross-breeding. The aggressive Africanized drones outcompete European drones for a newly developed queen of such hive, ultimately resulting in hybridization of the existing colony. Requeening, a term for swapping out the old queen with a new, already fertilized one, can reduce hybridization in apiaries. As a prophylactic measure, the majority of beekeepers in North America tend to requeen their hives annually, maintaining strong colonies and avoiding hybridization.
  
  Section::::Consequences of selection.:Defensiveness.
   Another proposed remedy for farmers of pollinated crops is simply to switch from using beekeepers to the use of native bees, such as bumble bees and mason bees. Native bees can be helped to establish themselves by providing suitable nesting locations and some additional crops the bees could use to feed from (e.g. when the pollination season of the commercial crops on the farm has ended).
   Beekeepers use the ability of the bees to produce new queens to increase their colonies in a procedure called "splitting a colony". To do this, they remove several brood combs from a healthy hive, taking care to leave the old queen behind. These combs must contain eggs or larvae less than three days old and be covered by young "nurse bees", which care for the brood and keep it warm. These brood combs and attendant nurse bees are then placed into a small "nucleus hive" with other combs containing honey and pollen. As soon as the nurse bees find themselves in this new hive and realize they have no queen, they set about constructing emergency queen cells using the eggs or larvae they have in the combs with them.
   In 1971 other bee breeders began to join the Buckfast breeding program and established their own isolated mating stations, as well as using instrumental insemination, today the breeding of pedigree Buckfast bees is regulated by the "Federation of European Buckfast Beekeepers" (G.D.E.B.) in over twenty six countries with numerous breeders.
  
  Section::::History.
   Every new bee strain or bee race was first crossed with the existing Buckfast bees. In many cases, the new desired qualities were passed on to the new generation and the new combination was then made stable with further breeding work. Every crossing with a new race took about 10 years before the desired genes were fixed in the strain. Over 70 years, Brother Adam succeeded in developing a vigorous, healthy and fecund honey bee, which was named the Buckfast bee.
   As with other highly eusocial bee species, "T. iridipennis" colonies are founded by swarming. However, this process is different for stingless bees like "T. iridipennis" and honey bees. In honeybees, the process is abrupt and a large group of workers leaves the original colony with the old queen, thus few connections are maintained between the old and the new colonies. The process is more gradual for stingless bees such as "T. iridepennis". First scout workers from the original nest find a new nest site and gradually transport resources there from the mother colony. A virgin queen from the mother colony then arrives usually accompanied by a mass of workers. It is only after several days to half a year that relations between the mother and daughter colonies are severed.
   The key factor in this is the prevention or skillful management of the swarming impulse. If a colony swarms unexpectedly and the beekeeper does not manage to capture the resulting swarm, he is likely to harvest significantly less honey from that hive, since he has lost half his worker bees at a single stroke. If, however, he can use the swarming impulse to breed a new queen but keep all the bees in the colony together, he maximizes his chances of a good harvest. It takes many years of learning and experience to be able to manage all these aspects successfully, though owing to variable circumstances many beginners often achieve a good honey harvest.
   His technique for introducing new queen bees to an existing hive was published in 1874. New queens are usually rejected by an existing hive. In his technique, Mr. Bechly removes a comb from the hive, places the comb and hive bees into an empty hive, and closes them in with the new queen. The bees being stressed by foreign imprisonment are unconcerned about the new queen. The old hive is left queenless and is also closed. Over the next several days, as the hives are reopened, the bees return to the old hive along with their new queen.
  
  Section::::Publications.
   In honey bees, the genetics of offspring can best be controlled by artificially inseminating a queen with drones collected from a single hive, where the drones' mother is known. In the natural mating process, a queen mates with multiple drones, which may not come from the same hive. Therefore, batches of female offspring have fathers of a completely different genetic origin.
  
  Section::::Anatomy.
   When a colony absconds (all bees leave the colony) or divides and so creates a swarm and then establishes a new colony, the bees must regress in their behaviour in order to establish the first generation in the new home. The most urgent task will be the creation of new beeswax for comb. Comb is much more difficult to come by than honey and requires about six times the energy to create. A newly hived swarm on bars (top bar hive) or empty foundation (Langstroth box hive) will often be fed sugar water, which they can then rapidly consume to create wax for new comb. (Mature hives cannot be so fed as they will store it in place of nectar, although a wintering hive may have to be fed if insufficient honey was left by the beekeeper.)
   After several days of orientation in and around the hive, the young queen flies to a drone congregation point – a site near a clearing and generally about above the ground – where drones from different hives congregate. They detect the presence of a queen in their congregation area by her smell, find her by sight and mate with her in midair; drones can be induced to mate with "dummy" queens with the queen pheromone. A queen will mate multiple times, and may leave to mate several days in a row (weather permitting) until her spermatheca is full.
   Section::::Cloake method of queen rearing.:Stage three.
  
  Grafted cells Installed: The queenless upper colony is now prepared to raise queens, and by inserting queen rearing bars with grafted larvae, the beekeeper provides candidates for new queens. At this time any emergency queen cells will be removed by the beekeeper. Stage three continues for one to two days, long enough for the cells to be fully accepted and built up.
  
  Section::::Cloake method of queen rearing.:Stage four.
   The mechanism of accepting other nest mates is unclear in "E. meriana," but there is a capacity for joint nest maintenance and tolerance. This places limits on female sterility because there is no kin selection. Worker castes and non-reproductive females would not evolve if bees accept newcomers to the nest in order to offset costs of a small colony and risks from enemies.
  
  Section::::Sociality.:Polymorphism and social limits.
   Colonies in trees have fixed comb, so inspection and management is impossible, as is most harvesting without destroying the colony. A beekeeper can perform a cut-out on a gum hive. The trunk is cut open to expose the cavity, and the comb is carefully removed and strapped into standard frames. The frames are then put to a conventional hive, such as a Langstroth hive. The bees will follow into the new hive especially if the queen and brood can be transferred.
   Section::::Formation of new colonies.
  
  Section::::Formation of new colonies.:Colony reproduction: swarming and supersedure.
   Honey bee life cycle
  
  The honey bee life cycle, here referring exclusively to the domesticated Western honey bee, depends greatly on their social structure. 
  
  Section::::Colony life.
   Queen rearing can be practiced on a small scale by hobbyist or sideline beekeepers raising a small amount of queens for their own use, or can be practiced on a larger, commercial scale by companies that produce queen bees for sale to the public. As of 2017, the cost of a queen honeybee ranges from $25 to $32.
  
  Beekeepers can also utilize alternative methods of queen rearing. Examples are the Jenter kit, walk-away split, Cloake board, and artificial insemination.
  
  Section::::External links.
  
  BULLET::::- Bees Gone Wild Apiaries, accessed May 2005
   While people think first of the European honey bee when pollination comes up, in fact there are many different means of pollination management that are used, both other insects and other mechanisms. There are other insects commercially available that are more efficient, like the blue orchard bee for fruit and nut trees, local bumblebees better specialized for some other crops, hand pollination that is essential for production of hybrid seeds and some greenhouse situations, and even pollination machines.
  
  Section::::Pollinator decline.
   Section::::Bee colonies.:Annual cycle of a bee colony.
   Section::::Behavior.:Role differentiation.
  
  In a simplified sense, the sex of each bee depends on the number of chromosomes it receives. Female bees have two sets of chromosomes (diploid)—one set from the queen and another from one of the male bees or drones. Drones have only one set of chromosomes (haploid), and are the result of unfertilized eggs, though inbreeding can result in diploid drones.
   In the mid to late spring, just before a bee hive would naturally split by swarming, beekeepers often remove frames of brood, with adhering bees, to make up new starter hives, called "nucs" or nucleus colonies. In areas where the climate is mild, one frame may be sufficient to start a new colony, with an added queen. But usually two to three frames are used, together with a frame that is predominantly honey. This ensures that there will be enough adult bees to provide the brood the adequate temperature and sufficient feed if there are a few rainy days when bees cannot gather nectar. If there are not enough adult bees to warm the combs, the brood may die from cold temperature overnight (aptly called "chilled brood").
   Some southern U.S. beekeepers keep bees primarily to raise queens and package bees for sale. Northern beekeepers can buy early spring queens and 3- or 4-pound packages of live worker bees from the South to replenish hives that die out during the winter, although this is becoming less practical due to the spread of the Africanized bee.
   BULLET::::2. Young worker bees, sometimes called "nurse bees", clean the hive and feed the larvae. When their royal jelly-producing glands begin to atrophy, they begin building comb cells. They progress to other within-colony tasks as they become older, such as receiving nectar and pollen from foragers, and guarding the hive. Later still, a worker takes her first orientation flights and finally leaves the hive and typically spends the remainder of her life as a forager.
  