In my previous post I doubted whether egg-laying by honey bee workers
serves any useful purpose either by design, or by accident. Here Gro
Amdam compares the behavior to cancer, with its symptoms of the
breakdown of the normal control mechanisms that govern the colony. She
concludes that the ensuing chaos provides a useful model for studying
the breakdown of regulatory systems that govern social as well as
biological order.

> The reproductive capability of individual worker bees is normally suppressed by pheromone driven inhibition of oogenesis and nest surveillance schemes enforced by the worker population. This system can be compromised, however. The order of the honeybee society is subsequently torn apart by uncontrolled replication of a malignant worker phenotype, a situation that is comparable to a lethal social cancer. [refers to Apis mellifera capensis]

> Within European honeybee populations (A. m. mellifera), a more benign dynamic arises through the behavior of so called "anarchistic workers". Although a considerable number of the drones in such colonies may stem from eggs laid by workers, the queen continues to be the dominant female reproductive. Thus, the society does not progress into the destructive state that emerges under A. m. capensis infestation.

> In this context, our chapter is a first initiative to underline that the honeybee, in addition, can become a model for understanding the frailty of underlying regulatory systems -- thereby increasing the knowledge of principles of disorder.

Order, Disorder, Death: Lessons from a Superorganism
Gro V. Amdam and Siri-Christine Seehuu
Adv Cancer Res. 2006 ; 95: 31–60.

-- 
Peter L Borst
Room T3 001
Vet Research Tower
Cornell University
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/plb6

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