Fig. 1.

Experimental design. For each replicate (×3), we collected the semen from four drones and split each semen into two equal parts. We performed instrumental insemination of virgin queens each with half the semen of four drones, before allowing each queen to lay and produce worker offspring. We collected the hind legs of each drone and worker and performed microsatellite genotyping to assign them to their respective patriline. We performed WGBS of each drone’s half semen and thorax, as well as a pool of 20 worker thoraxes from each patriline to analyze their DNA methylation profiles.