The paper “The Curious Promiscuity of Queen Honey Bees (Apis mellifera): Evolutionary and Behavioral Mechanisms” (Annals of Zoology Fennici [2001]:255– 265) describes a study of the mating behavior of queen honeybees. The following quote is from the paper: Queens flew for an average of 24.2 6
9.21 minutes on their mating flights, which is consistent with previous findings. On those flights, queens effectively mated with 4.6 6 3.47 males (mean 6 SD).
a. The intervals reported in the quote from the paper were based on data from the mating flights of n = 30 queen honeybees. One of the two intervals reported is stated to be a confidence interval for a population mean. Which interval is this? Justify your choice.
b. Use the given information to construct a 95% confidence interval for the mean number of partners on a mating flight for queen honeybees. For purposes of this exercise, assume that it is reasonable to consider these 30 queen honeybees as representative of the population of queen honeybees.