Hive management genetics of the queen. Queens and drones are selectively bred to increase the production of royal jelly. A good yield per hive is 5 kg per year. Bee venom (apitoxin) is obtained by stimulating the bee with an electric current that incite them to sting, releasing a drop of poison onto a glass slide. The crystallized venom can be collected and processed. In order to get 1 gram of dry venom, it is necessary to collect the apitoxin of 10,000 to 15,000 bees. Bee brood as such is generally not a commercial commodity. However, bee brood is edible, and is
Evolution of snake venom splicing. The Elapid snake "Bungarus fasciatus", for example, possesses a gene that is alternatively spliced to yield both a venom component and a physiological protein. Further diversification may have occurred by gene loss of specific venom components. For instance, the rattlesnake ancestor is believed to have had genes for neurotoxic PLA2 toxins, which are absent in modern non-neurotoxic "Crotalus" species. The various recruitment events had resulted in snake venom evolving into a very complex mixture of proteins. The venom of rattlesnakes, for example, includes nearly 40 different proteins from different protein families, and other snake venoms have been found to