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Abstract
Honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) queens are polyandrous, mating with multiple males. Polyandry results in high within-colony genetic variation; however, the adaptive drivers of this behavior are poorly understood. Most hypotheses trying to explain polyandry are variants of the “genetic variance” hypothesis, which explains that high levels of polyandry provide allelic richness to a colony, contributing to a colony’s survival and success. We investigated the mechanisms underlying queen mating patterns by utilizing artificial insemination to produce queens with a range of mating numbers and comparing their colonies for measures of fitness. We found that increasing polyandry led to lower infestation rates of Varroa destructor mites which supports the genetic variance hypotheses. Our findings bolster previous findings on the benefits of polyandry to colony success and support an additive relationship between polyandry and colony level phenotype.