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