Abstract: Queen mating flight is an important prelude of sexual matured virgin queens mating with drones, which is usually accompanied by a series of important physiological changes in queens’ bodies. In order to explore the differences of gene expression following queen mating flight behaviour, we analyzed the gene expression differences between the flying matured virgin queens and non-flying matured virgin queens of Apis cerana cerana using a high-throughput sequencing method. Through digital gene expression (DGE) sequencing, we obtained 5.98 and 6.01 million clean tags from the flying matured virgin queen and non-flying matured virgin queen samples, respectively. A total of 250 genes were differentially expressed between both, with 133 up-regulated and 117 down-regulated in the flying matured virgin queens. These differentially expressed genes can be classified into 348 functional categories and involved in 142 biochemical pathways, indicating that there are a large number of genes whose expression levels change during mating flight process of matured virgin queens. The results provide important gene expression information for further researching the molecular mechanisms of the physiological changes during queen mating flight in A. cerana cerana.

Key words: Apis cerana cerana, queen, flight behaviour, digital gene expression (DGE), gene expression, mating flight