George Fergusson wrote:
>Do these intermorphs do ordinary bee-things like foraging? 

There is no mention of them foraging in Dr. Degrandi-Hoffman's article. She
writes:

This is the first instance that IMs have been reported in African honey bees
in the New World. IMs have features in common with both workers and queens.
Morphological features such as body size, the shape of the head, mandibles,
stinger, and corbiculae of IMs are similar to workers. However, the shape of
the abdomen, number and distribution of thoracic and abdominal hairs, and
chemical composition of volatile compounds emanating from IMs are similar to
those from queens. 

Workers with reduced numbers of hairs and shiny black abdomens have been
reported previously and the appearance attributed to robbing behavior,
feeding on certain nectars or pollens or viral infection causing hairless or
“black bee” syndrome. In our study, robber bees were clearly distinguishable
from IMs. 

One explanation for IMs having morphological features that are similar to
workers and queens is that during a least a portion of their larval life
they were fed differently from larvae destined to be workers.  

Perhaps the most intriguing feature of IMs is that they emit many of the
same volatile compounds as a queen. Others have reported queen-like
components from the mandibular glands of intercastes of A. mellifera and
"pseudoqueens" from A. m. capensis , but this is the first report where
volatiles from IMs, queens, and workers are compared. 

pb

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