> would you explain a little bit more how and why this works. 

What to answer?
It's more than fifteen years ago that I saw laying workers in my colonies. Becoming older has some advantages ...
I applied the method three times and it always worked. The old beekeeper, who taught me the method, calls it "infallible" What I can only confirm.
Why? Consider this:
It has long been known that queen honey bees exercise amazing control over their colonies through the sophisticated use of chemicals (pheromones).  However, it is not fully understood how these chemicals operate.  A component of queen pheromone (QMP), homovanillyl alcohol (HVA) has been recently identified as having a remarkably similar chemical structure to the neurotransmitter dopamine, and to target dopamine pathways in the brains of honey bees.  These pathways play central roles in motor control and behavioural regulation.  A behavioural response to QMP and its impacts on learning capacity has been observed; young workers exposed to QMP are unable to learn to associate a specific odour with a negative stimulus (aversive learning), while young workers raised without QMP show aversive learning.  HVA has the same behavioural effect as QMP, although the observed effect is not as strong.  Preliminary studies have indicated that the effects of HVA may be mediated by a single receptor, AmDopEcR.  My PhD aims to investigate the actions of QMP (both its components and as a whole) on honeybee brains, particularly on dopamine pathways.  

More on QMP here:

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/7/2460.full.pdf+html


Kind regards,

Ghislain.

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