Home▸Biology▸Honey Bee Genetics Lab: Haplodiploidy, Polyandry & Breeding

🧬 Honey Bee Genetics Lab: Haplodiploidy, Polyandry & Breeding

A 3D honeycomb genetics lab: watch how many drones a queen mated with, colony inbreeding and selective breeding for Varroa resistance reshape the brood pattern, patrilines and diploid-drone loss on the comb.

Biology3DAdvanced60 FPS

A hexagonal brood comb rendered as a live 3D genetics readout: patrilines from the queen's many drone matings, diploid-drone "shot brood" holes from inbreeding, and a spreading Varroa-resistance trait under selective breeding.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Haploid drones fertilise the queen with genetically uniform sperm, so each patriline of half-sisters is far more related than typical human siblings. When a patriline happens to share a csd sex-allele with the queen, its brood becomes diploid drones that nurse bees remove — visible as dark, pitted "shot brood."

🎮 How to Use

Set how many drones the queen mated with, raise the colony's inbreeding level to see shot-brood holes appear, and increase selection strength before clicking "Breed next generation" to watch the green Varroa-resistance trait spread across the comb.

💡 Did You Know?

A queen typically mates with 12–20 drones on her nuptial flights and stores their sperm for years, so a single colony can contain a dozen or more distinct paternal subfamilies living and working side by side.

⚙ Under the hood

beesgeneticsbreedingpollinationcolonydroneinbreedingThree.js

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install