Queen rearing by high and low queen mandibular pheromone responding worker honey bees (Apis mellifera L.)

Strains of workers that were high or low in their retinue attraction response to queen mandibular pheromone (QMP) in a laboratory bioassay were fostered in queenless colonies to measure their differential queen-rearing behaviors. High-strain workers spent proportionately more time working on and in queen cells than low-strain workers, and there were significant age by strain effects for time spent rearing queen cells. No interindividual differences were detected among the strains in the tendency to rear queens. Results from this experiment suggest that QMP retinue attraction response may be a mechanism upon which selection acts for division of queen-rearing labor.