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Subject:	Re: Queen Supersedure
From:	Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:	Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:	Sun, 23 Mar 2014 10:36:30 -0400
Content-Type:	text/plain
Parts/Attachments:	text/plain (13 lines)

Tom Seeley enlightens us a bit:

First, workers must contact the queen for colony-wide worker inhibition, thus airborne dispersal of queen substance is at most a minor mechanism. Second, queen substance transmission is rapid and extensive. Within 24 h of removing a queen from a colony the nurse bees will have started rearing a replacement queen.

The initial motivation for this study was the hope of clarifying the mechanism whereby honeybee colonies 'compute' the switching time for shifting from colony growth to colony reproduction. Queen signal dilution does not appear important because small, crowded colonies will rear queens and swarm whereas large, but uncrowded colonies tend not to undergo reproduction 

Seeley (1979) Queen Substance Dispersal by Messenger Workers in Honeybee Colonies. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 5, 391 415 

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