And now, something completely different:

In China, beekeepers found a way to prevent queens from killing one
another by ablating their mandibles. By forcing several queens to
cohabit, they create more productive colonies for
commercial exploitation. In order to understand how manipulating
the fighting ability of queens affects the social structure of
honeybee colonies, we studied the effects of mandibular ablation
on the strategic decisions of opponents during the fights.

Ablated queens in our
experiment or weak queens in nature could refrain from fighting
since self-assessment could show them they have low probability of
winning. It is likely that weak queens were selected to avoid fights
since probability of dying is high when their ability to hold onto
their opponent and sting (i.e. to attack and kill an opponent) is
reduced. Indeed, for a weak queen that does not have information
about its opponent's fighting ability, the best strategy for a higher
chance of surviving is not to initiate a contest.

FROM
"Self Assessment in Insects: Honeybee Queens Know Their Own Strength"
by Vincent Dietemann, et al

http://tinyurl.com/32t38m

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