Queen Bee Chemistry



A queen bee courted by other females. Notice her  larger size and the yellow marker added by a biologist. http://articles.extension.org/pages/73133/honey-bee-queens:-evaluating-the-most-important-colony-member

When not exposed to such gene-silencers, a queen bee will normally emerge from her larval stage five days sooner than other bees. After killing competing virgin queens, she diversifies genetic input by mating with 7 to 17 drones, who die soon afterwards. With the ability to store about seven million sperm, the queen will then be fed and groomed by workers while she lays eggs for the rest of her life. In what surely is a matriarch’s fantasy, the older a queen bee gets, the more prolific she becomes in laying eggs, becoming even more attractive to her servants. But how does this happen?

The various effects on bee behavior controlled by a complex of a chemical signals from the queen bee. Source: JB Free

It has been known for decades that a pheromone (chemical messenger) is released from the queen bee’s mandibular gland in her lower mouth.  In subsequent experiments, however, the compound that had been identified as E-9-oxodec-2-enoic acid, could not on its own exert any retinue behaviour on worker bees. Retinue behaviour is what’s used to described the way workers groom and feed the queen. It’s only part of the influence that the queen bee’s chemical messengers can have on bee behaviour, as revealed in the adjacent illustration. There are a series of effects with immediate impacts (releaser) and those with long term consequences(primer) on the endocrine and reproductive systems of workers.

Three of at least 9 compounds released to make sure the queen bee gets groomed and fed by other females.

Eventually, in the late 1980s Canadian researchers from Simon Fraser University revealed that the original compound was really a mixture of two mirror-image molecules known as enantiomers. They also identified three other compounds from the mandibular gland. When a tube containing the 5-compound mixture was placed in a beehive, the workers left the cells that they were building for new queens and started to press their antennae against the glass while licking the synthetic queen. But the mystery wasn’t entirely solved. As the authors of the same study stated in a review paper 16 years later, the 5-compound mixture is ineffective in some strains of honeybees. The response is influenced by variable genetic factors and by at least 4 other compounds, specifically coniferyl alcohol, another alcohol, methyl oleate and linolenic acid. As the queen ages she releases higher concentrations of the compounds to ensure a positive correlation between the attention she receives and the amount of eggs she lays.

When looking beyond the queen and to the general health of bees, including solitary ones, it was assumed that the concentration of pesticides found in bees was too low to harm them. If inspected individually, each pesticide’s level is indeed below the bee’s threshold. But collectively, along with bee diseases and diminishing flower diversity, pesticides have a detrimental impact on a highly beneficial insect. Whether or not bees produce honey and wax for us, they are the sole and essential pollinators of plants such as squash, zucchini, pumpkins, kiwi, watermelon, cantaloupes and Brazil and macadamian nuts. Besides, their mysteries have justifiably inspired more research than any other insect.


  • Honey Bee Queens: Evaluating the Most Important Colony Member
    Bee Health October 07, 2015  Philip A. Moore, Michael E. Wilson, John A. Skinner
  •  A dietary phytochemical alters caste-associated gene expression in honey bees. Wenfu Mao, Mary A. Schuler, and May R. Berenbaum. 2015. Science Advances 1(7).

  • Pheromone Communication in the Honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) KEITH N. SLESSOR,1 MARK L. WINSTON,2 and YVES LE CONTE3 Journal of Chemical Ecology, Vol. 31, No. 11, November 2005 (#2005) DOI: 10.1007/s10886-005-7623-9
  • New components of the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.)
    queen retinue pheromone. Christopher I. Keeling*†, Keith N. Slessor*, Heather A. Higo‡, and Mark L. Winston‡ Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003 Apr 15;100(8):4486-91. Epub 2003 Apr 3.

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