The genetic structure of social insect colonies is predicted to affect the balance between cooperation and conflict. Stingless bees are of special interest in this respect because they are singly mated relatives of the multiply mated honeybees. Multiple mating is predicted to lead to workers policing each others' male production with the result that virtually all males are produced by the queen...

A hitherto largely unresolved problem in behavioral biology is how workers are prevented from reproducing in large insect societies with high relatedness. Signals of the queen are assumed to inform the nestmates about her presence in the colony, which leads to indirect fitness benefits for workers. In the ant Camponotus floridanus, we found such a signal located on queen-laid eggs. In groups of...

The effect of different statuses of honeybee queens, Apis mellifera (one-year-old mated queen; supersedure queen; three-day old virgin queen; queen cell; without queen; and without queen/without bee bread) on many aspects of 3day old workers were studied with scanning electron microscopy (SEM). This study was carried out to describe the (types, distribution, numbers and measurements) of the dif...

Rnpalidia marginata, a tropical, primitively eusocial, polistine wasp, is unusual in that the queen (the sole egg-layer) is neither the most behaviorally dominant nor the most active individual in the colony. The queen by herself rarely ever initiates interactions toward her nest mates or unloads returning foragers. There are always a few workers in the colony who are more dominant and acth"e t...

Unlike other primitively eusocial wasps, Ropalidia marginata colonies are usually headed by remarkably docile and behaviourally non-dominant queens who are nevertheless completely successful in maintaining reproductive monopoly. As in other species, loss of the queen results in one of the workers taking over as the next queen. But unlike in other species, here, the queen's successor cannot be p...

In most species of social insect the queen signals her presence to her workers via pheromones. Worker responses to queen pheromones include retinue formation around the queen, inhibition of queen cell production and suppression of worker ovary activation. Here we show that the queen signal of the Brazilian stingless bee Friesella schrottkyi is a mixture of cuticular hydrocarbons. Stingless bees...

Honeybees are endowed with pheromones, many of which exhibit caste specific composition, one of which is Dufour’s gland pheromone (QDP). The queen possesses long chain esters that are absent in queenright (QR) workers. However queenless (QL) workers that develop ovaries also express these queen substances. The ability of QL-workers to produce the queen-like compounds suggests that under normal ...

Western honey bees, Apis mellifera, live in highly eusocial colonies that are each typically headed by a single queen. The queen is the sole reproductive female in a healthy colony, and because long-term colony survival depends on her ability to produce a large number of offspring, queen health is essential for colony success. Honey bees have recently been experiencing considerable declines in ...