Animal Behavior: The Orphan Rebellion
James Nieh
Current Biology Vol 22 No 8

EXCERPTS:

After their queen has left with a swarm, orphaned larvae exhibiting rebel traits emerge in honeybee colonies. As adults, these orphans have reduced food glands to feed the colony’s larvae and more developed ovaries to selfishly reproduce their own offspring.

Potential rebels were returned to their natal colonies, half of which had no queen. Being reared in a queenless colony did not affect larval body mass. However, these orphan larvae developed into workers with more ovarioles and a greater potential for egg laying. They also had enlarged mandibular glands, the source of queen pheromone. Young workers normally act as nurse bees and have well developed hypopharyngeal glands to secrete brood food. In contrast, orphan larvae emerged as workers with smaller hypopharyngeal glands. They had the physical traits of rebels: bees set to reproduce, not to nurse. These rebels retained their distinctive differences even after being returned to a queenright colony. As adults, after 15 days, these rebel workers continued to display increased ovary activation, smaller hypopharyngeal glands and larger mandibular glands as compared to controls. 

Thus, the reproductive physiology of the rebels, attained during larval development in a queenless colony, can have persistent effects even after a new queen emerges. This raises several new questions. Will worker policing intensify while the old daughters are around, and what proportion of worker eggs will escape the police? Even if the rebels do not lay eggs, other aspects of their biology may change. For one, they may feed larvae less often than non-rebels. They may also live longer. Workers that are less involved in brood rearing live longer than those that do, and ovarian development is correlated with longevity.

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