Whether a female honey bee (Apis mellifera) develops into a worker or a queen depends on her nutrition during development, which changes the epigenome to alter the developmental trajectory. Beekeepers typically exploit this developmental plasticity to produce queen bee by transplanting worker larvae into queen cells to be reared as queens, thus redirecting a worker developmental pathway to a queen developmental pathway. We studied the consequences of this manipulation for the queen phenotype and methylome over four generations. Queens reared from worker larvae consistently had fewer ovarioles than queens reared from eggs. Over four generations the methylomes of lines of queens reared from eggs and worker larvae diverged, accumulating increasing differences in exons of genes related to caste differentiation, growth and immunity. We discuss the consequences of these cryptic changes to the honey bee epigenome for the health and viability of honey bee stocks.

是否有雌性蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）成长为工人或女王后，将取决于她在发育过程中的营养，从而改变表观基因组，从而改变发育轨迹。养蜂人通常利用这种发育可塑性，通过将工queen幼虫移植到皇后细胞中作为皇后饲养，从而将皇后蜂重新定向为皇后发育途径。我们研究了这种操纵对四代女王表型和甲基化组的影响。从工虫幼虫饲养的皇后一直比从卵饲养的皇后少。在四代人中，从卵和工幼虫中培育出来的皇后系的甲基化组发生了分化，积累了与种姓分化，生长和免疫相关的基因外显子的差异不断增加。