> Do pheromones influence or stimulate hygienic behavior? Something I was not aware of.

Hi Mark

This is something we are just beginning to understand. Previously, it was thought that all bee behavior is innate, they are born with it. Now we see that some behaviors can be learned by them. Obviously they can learn things like location, etc and they already know how to make comb, etc. But what else can they learn, how much of this is passed on to the next generation, and how this happens -- we don't know. 

Alarm pheromones can keep the colony on edge for a long time, and could conceivably change the behavior of the whole colony. Queen pheromones might have the opposite effect. Some folks claim requeening a hive can have a very nearly immediate effect which would be unrelated to the workers that she would eventually produce (replacing a colonies workers with her daughters would take months). 

As far a hygienic behavior, perhaps the hygienic bees excite their neighbors, perhaps they give off pheromones, nobody knows at this point. It seems clear that hygienic bees have a much more keen sense of smell -- that's how they detect sick or dead larvae and pupae. Then they seem eager to get rid of the diseased material in a hurry. African bees seem to be very vigilant in a number of ways, including hygiene and nest defense. Whether this is communicated by their actions or by pheromones, I don't know. 

It is certainly worth investigating what is learned in the hive and if it is passed on from generation. We have spoke here in the past about the concept of dividing colonies to propagate their traits, instead of making nucs and using breeder queens to requeen them. Charlie Mraz was a champion of this idea. He would split his good hives, on the idea that it was better to propagate a lot of different lineages than to requeen your whole outfit with one or two lines. However, splitting hives in that way is probably not the most cost effective way of making increase.

PLB

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