Norman E. Gary

Chemical Mating Attractants in the Queen Honey Bee

Drone attraction to ether extracts of virgin queens (Apis mellifera L.) demonstrated that chemical communication enables the drones to orient themselves to queens during mating flights. The primary source of queen mating attractants is the mandibular glands. Fractionation of mandibular gland lipids yielded several attractive fractions that may act jointly. One fraction was queen substance (9-oxodec-2-enoic acid).

Queen Honey Bee Attractiveness as Related to Mandibular Gland Secretion

The termination of mandibular gland secretion by gland removal in living mated queen honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) caused approximately 85 percent loss of queen attractiveness to worker bees. The secretion of attractants in virgin queens increased with age. Old virgins were as attractive as mated queens. A rapid assay for queen attractiveness is described.

The Events Following Queen Cell Construction in Honeybee Colonies

IBRA has always tried to serve bee research and beekeeping in the best possible way. To do this it has had to evolve and change with the times: witness our current efforts to make our material instantly available on the web, in accordance with the demands of current researchers and readers. In an age when the initial response of most people to something unknown is “to Google it”, the new generation of post graduate researchers may find it hard to realise the important part played by printed journals only a generation ago. Such a journal was Journal of Apicultural Research now commencing its Fiftieth Volume. It was first published in 1962 and came about as a result of pressure on IBRA, then the Bee Research Association, to create a separate international journal for the publication of original research papers. To this day the journal remains the worlds foremost English language bee research journal. To celebrate those fifty years of excellence we are reproducing here the very first article ever published: The Events Following Queen Cell Construction in Honeybee Colonies by N E Gary and R A Morse from one of the leading bee research departments in the US at Cornell University. Summary Colony behaviour in queen replacement was studied for 6½ months in 10 colonies of honeybees. Traps attached to colony entrances collected dead queens. The pattern of queen replacement was found to be extremely variable, and the data indicate: (1) that neither swarming nor supersedure necessarily follows maturation or queen cells; (2) that one or more queens may be reared and rejected before swarming or supersedure occurs, if it does at all.