In honey bees, observations are usually made on colonies. The phenotype of a colony is affected by the average breeding value for the worker effect of the thousands of workers in the colony (the worker group) and by the breeding value for the queen effect of the queen of the colony. Because the worker group consists of multiple individuals, interpretation of the variance components and heritabilities of phenotypes observed on the colony and of the accuracy of selection is not straightforward. The additive genetic variance among worker groups depends on the additive genetic relationship between the drone-producing queens (DPQ) that produce the drones that mate with the queen. Here, we clarify how the relatedness between DPQ affects phenotypic variance, heritability and accuracy of the estimated breeding values of replacement queens. Second, we use simulation to investigate the effect of assumptions about the relatedness between DPQ in the base population on estimates of genetic parameters. Relatedness between DPQ in the base generation may differ considerably between populations because of their history. Our results show that estimates of (co)variance components and derived genetic parameters were seriously biased (25% too high or too low) when assumptions on the relationship between DPQ in the statistical analysis did not agree with reality.

中文翻译：

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关于蜜蜂的遗传参数和估计育种值准确性的说明

在蜜蜂中，通常在殖民地上进行观察。殖民地的表型受该殖民地中数千名工人（工人群体）的工人效应的平均繁殖值和该殖民地女王的皇后效应的繁殖值的影响。由于工人组由多个人组成，因此对在殖民地上观察到的表型的变异成分和遗传力以及选择的准确性的解释并不简单。工人群体之间的加性遗传方差取决于产生无人机的女王/王后（DPQ）之间的加性遗传关系，该无人机与女王/王后交配。在这里，我们阐明了DPQ之间的相关性如何影响表型变异，遗传力和替代皇后的估计育种值的准确性。第二，我们使用模拟研究基本种群中DPQ之间的相关性假设对遗传参数估计值的影响。由于种群的历史，各代之间的DPQ之间的关联性可能存在很大差异。我们的结果表明，当统计分析中DPQ之间的关系假设与现实不符时，（协）方差成分和衍生遗传参数的估计存在严重偏差（太高或太低25％）。