Question

What is the true case of Honey Bee?
A) Male diploid, female haploid
B) Male diploid, female diploid
C) Male haploid, female haploid
D) Male haploid, female diploid

Answer 1

Hint: Males develop from unfertilized eggs and females develop from fertilized eggs. This is known as haplodiploidy or sex determination system. In honeybees, the males are derived from the female entirely. Females have 32 chromosomes and male have 16 chromosomes.

Complete Answer:
- In honeybees, males or drones are completely derived from the queen or mother in which the queen has 32 chromosomes and drones have 16 chromosomes.
- The Queen is diploid whereas as male is haploid. Drones(males) produce sperm cells which contain the entire genome. Thus, except for mutation, the sperm are genetically identical.
- As male bees derived from mother, on the other hand the genetic makeup of female bees is half derived from mother and remaining half from father.
- So, if a queen bee mates with one male then only two of her daughters will share $\dfrac{3}{4}$ of their genes on average.
- The diploid female’s genome is recombined for her daughters while the haploid male’s genome is inherited by his daughters.

The correct answer is option D i.e., Male haploid, female diploid.

Note: Haplodiploidy determines the sex in all the insects by the number of sets of chromosomes an individual can receive. From the union of an egg and sperm develops as female and unfertilized egg develops a male. So, this means that male have half the number of chromosomes that a female can have. Males are haploid and females are diploid.