🧬 Honey Bee Population Genetics

About this simulation

Each amber sphere is one bee at a single colour locus with two alleles: A (dominant, bright amber) and a (recessive, dark "cordovan"). Every simulated generation, the colony's next allele frequency is resampled the way real finite populations actually reproduce — through random sampling of gametes, not a fixed formula. That randomness is genetic drift, and it is strongest in small colonies.

Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium

With no drift, no migration and random mating, genotype proportions settle at p² (AA), 2pq (Aa) and q² (aa) and stay there forever — the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. This simulator breaks each of those assumptions on demand so you can see exactly which one is responsible when the colony drifts away from it.

What each control breaks

• Colony size (N) — smaller N means fewer gametes sampled each generation, so allele frequency swings wildly and can fix (reach 0% or 100%) by chance alone. This is genetic drift.
• Gene flow — a fraction of each generation's alleles are drawn from an outside "migrant" population fixed at p=50%, modelling queens or drones brought in from another apiary or subspecies. Migration pulls the colony's frequency toward the migrant source and counteracts drift.
• Inbreeding coefficient F — models non-random mating between relatives (common in small, isolated apiaries or after heavy queen culling). It does not change the allele frequency itself, but it shifts genotypes away from Hardy-Weinberg proportions — fewer heterozygotes, more of both homozygotes — which is exactly how conservation geneticists detect inbreeding in real subspecies.

Did you know?

Real honey bee subspecies conservation programmes (for example protecting the native dark bee Apis mellifera mellifera from hybridisation) track allele frequencies at marker loci exactly like this, because uncontrolled gene flow from imported queens is the biggest threat to a subspecies' distinct gene pool — while too little gene flow in an isolated, shrinking population raises inbreeding and can cause the diploid-male problem in honey bees' haplodiploid sex-determination system.