A bee colony can descend into chaos when the queen bee dies, and the worker bees will abandon their usual habits in pursuit of pleasure.
The absence of the queen bee leads the worker bees to forfeit their usual role of controlling the reproductive behavior of the entire colony, making them vulnerable to attacks from parasitic bees from other colonies.
At least the worker bees die in the bliss of this chaos. Before the entire colony disbands, the worker bees will mate excessively in an effort to produce one final generation of male bees to ensure the continuation of their lineage.
Professor Benjamin Oldroyd at the University of Sydney, Australia, and his Thai collaborators investigated what occurs when a colony of Asian honeybees (Apis florea) loses its leader.
They found that the number of foreign (parasitic) worker bees doubled. Nearly half of these parasitic bees had active ovaries, compared to one-fifth of the native worker bees.
“Controlling the worker bees is essential to maintain reproductive balance and protect the colony from parasitic bees from other hives. However, in order to ensure lineage continuation when the queen bee dies, they are compelled to abandon their control role to lay their own eggs,” Oldroyd stated.
The control policy in bees, discovered in 1989, means that if worker bees start laying eggs, their eggs will be eaten. But worker bees without a queen face the risk of extinction if they do not produce a new queen from one of their sisters or produce a final brood of male bees to mate with another queen.
“The research results indicate that each bee colony is a complex, balanced society that only functions effectively under the control policy of worker behavior. Once that policy is removed, the colony collapses,” Oldroyd explained.
M.T. (according to ABC Online)
