Brood Pheromone Effects on Colony Protein Supplement Consumption and Growth in the Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in a Subtropical Winter Climate

Fatty acid esters extractable from the surface of honey bee, Apis mellifera L. (Hymenoptera: Apidae), larvae, called brood pheromone, significantly increase rate of colony growth in the spring and summer when flowering plant pollen is available in the foraging environment. Increased colony growth rate occurs as a consequence of increased pollen intake through mechanisms such as increasing number of pollen foragers and pollen load weights returned. Here, we tested the hypothesis that addition of brood pheromone during the winter pollen dearth period of a humid subtropical climate increases rate of colony growth in colonies provisioned with a protein supplement. Experiments were conducted in late winter (9 February–9 March 2004) and mid-winter (19 January–8 February 2005). In both years, increased brood area, number of bees, and amount of protein supplement consumption were significantly greater in colonies receiving daily treatments of brood pheromone versus control colonies. Amount of extractable protein from hypopharyngeal glands measured in 2005 was significantly greater in bees from pheromone-treated colonies. These results suggest that brood pheromone may be used as a tool to stimulate colony growth in the southern subtropical areas of the United States where the package bee industry is centered and a large proportion of migratory colonies are overwintered.Keywords: winter colony growth, brood pheromone, honey be

Effects of Brood Pheromone Modulated Brood Rearing Behaviors on Honey Bee (Apis mellifera L.) Colony Growth

A hallmark of eusociality is cooperative brood care. In most social insect systems brood rearing labor is divided between individuals working in the nest tending the queen and larvae, and foragers collecting food outside the nest. To place brood rearing division of labor within an evolutionary context, it is necessary to understand relationships between individuals in the nest engaged in brood care and colony growth in the honey bee. Here we examined responses of the queen, queen-worker interactions, and nursing behaviors to an increase in the brood rearing stimulus environment using brood pheromone. Colony pairs were derived from a single source and were headed by open-mated sister queens, for a total of four colony pairs. One colony of a pair was treated with 336 µg of brood pheromone, and the other a blank control. Queens in the brood pheromone treated colonies laid significantly more eggs, were fed longer, and were less idle compared to controls. Workers spent significantly more time cleaning cells in pheromone treatments. Increasing the brood rearing stimulus environment with the addition of brood pheromone significantly increased the tempo of brood rearing behaviors by bees working in the nest resulting in a significantly greater amount of brood reared

Cued in: honey bee pheromones as information flow and collective decision-making

Recent studies using diverse disciplines ranging from classical behavioral assays to quantitative trait locus mapping, have revealed that chemical communication in honey bees is generally complex. Pheromones that are blends of multiple components are the rule rather than the exception. Subsets of multiple component blends regulate common and different systems. Reviewed are recent studies in pheromone regulation of colony defense, foraging ontogeny, and retinue behavior. Honey bee chemical communication is discussed as an emergent property of a complex system with dynamic properties calling for a complex systems approach of analysis

Africanized and European honey bee worker ovarian follicle development response to racial brood pheromone extracts

Africanized and European worker honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) ovary follicle development response to Africanized and European larval extracts and synthetic brood pheromone were measured and modeled. Africanized workers had significantly greater baseline development than European workers. Racial extracts did not differentially affect Africanized or European follicle development. Africanized EC$_{50}$ of brood pheromone for follicle development inhibition was 16 times greater than for European workers. The higher worker reproductive ability of Africanized workers appeared intrinsic and was not explained by the racial blend of pheromone or composition of the adult rearing environment. Higher colony-level reproduction apparently extends to the individual-level in Africanized bees

Grooming behavior by Apis mellifera L. in the presence of Acarapis woodi (Rennie) (Acari: Tarsonemidae)

The role of grooming behavior by the honey bee, Apis mellifera L., in limiting the infestation of, or being elicited by, the parasitic mite Acarapis woodi was investigated. Grooming behaviors examined included allogrooming and the grooming dance that involves self or autogrooming. Observation hives monitored over 24 h revealed that dancing increased significantly at night while allogrooming decreased. In 32 mite-infested observation hives the percentage of bees infested was positively correlated with allogrooming acts and dances observed. In a third experiment, young marked bees were introduced into three hives with 0, 50 and 70 % tracheal mite prevalence and grooming dances increased significantly in the bees 1-3 d of age in the mite-infested colonies. We postulate that mite movement on young bees elicits the grooming dance. Bees from four different single patrilines that had exhibited different propensities to allogroom or dance were marked and placed into eight mite-infested colonies for 5 d. Dissections of marked bees revealed that the allogrooming line was most susceptible and the dancing line least susceptible to mite infestation. We postulate that the dancing line of bees had a lower threshold for detecting mites on their body resulting in increased dance behavior and autogrooming, which we propose lowered the number of mites that transferred to these bees. This is the first evidence for a mechanism of resistance to the honey bee tracheal mite. © Inra/DIB/AGIB/Elsevier, Pari