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Date: | Fri, 16 Sep 2022 08:40:44 -0400 |
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One of my long standing interests has been the issue of queen influence over the colony. There are two schools of thought, one of which is:
> Queen pheromones appear to be an honest signal that advertises the presence of a healthy reproductive individual (Luke Holman 2018).
To me, this fails to explain why a colony of bees fails to replace a queen that is no longer productive. A neighbor has such a hive. We looked at it this spring and the queen was obviously failing, but still laying some worker eggs. They should have superseded her, according to the books.
Now, four months later, the queen and bees are still there. The colony looks almost the same. They have a few queen cells here and there, but they have never produced any results. By now, the chances of them raising a queen is approaching zero.
And yet, the colony behaves as if they had a perfectly normal queen, she even looks perfectly normal. The only explanation is that the queen's control or influence over the colony is decoupled from her actual value.
> While much evidence stands for the queen signal theory, some researchers still support the queen control theory (Margarita Orlova 2021)
My speculation is that this a mechanism she has to maintain the colony structure during normal broodless periods. On the other hand, this doesn't explain why some colonies replace what we perceive as a properly laying "good" queen. However, some researchers have posited a third position, that it is unknowable:
> Interpretations of how queen pheromones exert their inhibition are often confounded by confusion over proximate and ultimate mechanisms. The action of queen pheromone can be interpreted as a form of “queen control” (in which queens manipulate workers in ways that prevent workers from maximizing their fitness, effectively chemical castration) or as a “queen signal” (in which both queens and workers benefit from the signal because they both maximize their inclusive fitness) ... the “queen control” and “queen signal” hypotheses cannot be distinguished empirically. (Ronai, et al 2016)
PLB
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