The morpho-ethological characteristics of honey bees Apis mellifera L. of Perm region

The European dark bees (Apis mellifera mellifera L.) divided into many populations occupying a wide range and living in different climatic zones. The research of morphological features of all castes of bee colony, and the description of their ethological features makes it possible to more fully characterize and distinguish a particular group of bees. The aim of the research was to describe the main morphological and some ethological features of queen artificial reproduction, drones, and worker of the European dark bees of the Perm region. Methods. The research was carried out on one of the breeding apiaries of the Perm region on colony of the European dark bees. Morphometric studies were performed according to the standard technique with the use of computer technology. Scientific novelty. For the first time, the morphological and ethological characteristics of honeybees of the Perm region are described most fully. Also experimental study was carried out on the use of a new technology for reproduction of virgin queen bees. Research results and practical significance. In the long-term dynamics, it is shown that the main breed-defining morphometric and ethological characteristics of the studied individuals of all castes of the colony of bee belong to the European dark breed. The results obtained can be used in the identification of bees in the Permian population and the implementation of the selection process in apiaries in the region. New method of artificial breeding of virgin queens allowed to obtain queens corresponding to the standard of the European dark bees and can be applied in practical breeding. Observations were made on the flight activity of drones and flight timing of virgin queen bees, the results of which can be used in practice in the process of obtaining mated queens.

Transcriptomic analysis of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) queen spermathecae reveals genes that may be involved in sperm storage after mating

Honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens have a remarkable organ, the spermatheca, which successfully stores sperm for years after a virgin queen mates. This study uniquely characterized and quantified the transcriptomes of the spermathecae from mated and virgin honey bee queens via RNA sequencing to identify differences in mRNA levels based on a queen’s mating status. The transcriptome of drone semen was analyzed for comparison. Samples from three individual bees were independently analyzed for mated queen spermathecae and virgin queen spermathecae, and three pools of semen from ten drones each were collected from three separate colonies. In total, the expression of 11,233 genes was identified in mated queen spermathecae, 10,521 in virgin queen spermathecae, and 10,407 in drone semen. Using a cutoff log2 fold-change value of 2.0, we identified 212 differentially expressed genes between mated and virgin spermathecal queen tissues: 129 (1.4% of total) were up-regulated and 83 (0.9% of total) were down-regulated in mated queen spermathecae. Three genes in mated queen spermathecae, three genes in virgin queen spermathecae and four genes in drone semen that were more highly expressed in those tissues from the RNA sequencing data were further validated by real time quantitative PCR. Among others, expression of Kielin/chordin-like and Trehalase mRNAs was highest in the spermathecae of mated queens compared to virgin queen spermathecae and drone semen. Expression of the mRNA encoding Alpha glucosidase 2 was higher in the spermathecae of virgin queens. Finally, expression of Facilitated trehalose transporter 1 mRNA was greatest in drone semen. This is the first characterization of gene expression in the spermathecae of honey bee queens revealing the alterations in mRNA levels within them after mating. Future studies will extend to other reproductive tissues with the purpose of relating levels of specific mRNAs to the functional competence of honey bee queens and the colonies they head.

Praising Elizabeth I in Latin at Norwich (1578)

When Elizabeth I visited the city of Norwich, she was publicly praised as a virgin queen for the first time in her reign. Although this image of Elizabeth becomes important to later historiography, this essay argues that there is a more sustained strand of royal myth-making in this visit that gives her even greater independent and specific political authority: that of an educated queen. At Norwich, Elizabeth was addressed more frequently in Latin than during any other visit during her reign, except for her visits to the universities. This essay analyzes the Latin texts to show how Norwich’s civic officials used this image to praise Elizabeth as a queen so individually powerful that she should commit more firmly to remaining a distinctly unmarried goddess of wisdom, a champion of Norwich, and the Nurse of God’s True (Protestant) Church. What goes unspoken is that she has no need for a foreign Catholic husband in the French Duke of Anjou—the context that underwrites the praise of her as a virgin queen. These Latin texts convey Elizabeth as a queen who has already the specific authority and nurturing care that give her distinctly peaceful nation all it needs to remain strong, prosperous, and religiously unified.

Elizabeth the Rhetorician. An Analysis of the Greatest Speeches by the Virgin Queen

In the recent past Elizabeth Tudor’s rhetorical charisma has raised an ever-increasing interest within the academic domain. The scope of this paper is to examine the queen’s abilities to persuade and captivate her subjects, as well as her diplomatic attitudes and magniloquence; in pursuing this aim, great attention will be given to the most remarkable speeches she gave before the dignitaries of the royal crown and the English militancy, with particular regard to those rhetorical skills she learnt to master and sharpen over the years. Since the political matter was, to her, an expression of ‘inwardness,’ Elizabeth’s way of ruling has always reflected her personal vicissitudes. Looking at her public speeches with a discerning eye means probing her mind quite consciously and attempting to identify with one of the greatest sovereigns whose mark on the sixteenth century European scene remains indelible.

Queen Elizabeth and the “Judgement of Paris”

The antique story of the Judgement of Paris was adapted to the language of courtly praise of royal women in sixteenth-century England. Absorbing the early modern interpretation of the tale as the praise of a balanced life (triplex vita), the motif lent itself well to the flattery of Queen Elizabeth appearing in the genres of poetry, pageantry, drama, and painting. However, within the Elizabethan context, the elements of the myth were slightly transformed in order to fit the cultural and political needs of the court. From the mid-1560s onwards, the elaboration of the theme became part of a broadening classical discourse within the praise of Queen Elizabeth, and the introduction of a fourth goddess, Diana, from the early 1580s foregrounded the emergence of her Virgin Queen cult. Furthermore, the tale of the Judgement of Paris represented a synthesis of the flattery of female excellence and the growing popularity of the pastoral tradition in English literature which highlighted the conceit of praising Elizabethan England as the land of a new Golden Age.

Shakespeare’s King Lear: A Modern Psychoanalytical

In undertaking a psychoanalytical approach to King Lear, this paper treads in the footsteps of Freud in his ‘The Theme of the Three Caskets.’ Clearly early Jacobean society was very different from our own; expectations of patriarchy and the place of daughters was only partly covered by the image of the now dead Virgin Queen Elizabeth. One theory alone will not be enough to explain the complexities of the text and modern ideas such as historicism and feminism are also shown to bring new insights, even though they are insights the playwright themselves may not have understood.

The (Pre)Posterity of Virgin Queen Iconography in Kapur’s Elizabeth Films

This article examines the quotations of Elizabeth I’s iconic portraiture as Virgin Queen in Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), and their effect on our a posteriori conceptualization of the depicted body of the female sovereign. Using Mieke Bal’s concept of preposterous history, I argue that Kapur’s transposition of Virgin Queen iconography onto celluloid results in a “(complex) text” that “is both a material object and an effect” (1999: 14). Bal acknowledges that the complexity that lies in the material results of the artistic quotation is not necessarily subversive, as it is dependent on the quoting artist’s ideological premise. Indeed, Kapur’s intermedial quotation of Elizabethan portraiture imbues the highly complex body of the female ruler with contemporary heteronormative notions of female sexuality, thereby reducing it to an object for the male gaze.