Queen pheromonal factors influencing comb construction by simulated honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) swarms

The influence of the queen and her pheromonal signal on comb construction w as examined. We tested four treatments with newly hived packages of bees co ntaining: 1) a mated queen, 2) a virgin queen, 3) no queen but with a dispe nser containing synthetic queen mandibular pheromone (QMP), and 4) no queen and no pheromone. After 10 days, the comb produced by each colony was remo ved, comb measurements made, bees from the comb-building area collected the size of the scales on the wax mirrors of the collected bees ranked on a sc ale of 0-4 and the queens removed and analyzed for QMP components. Queenles s workers built substantially less comb and the comb they did build had sig nificantly larger, drone-sized cells than for the other 3 treatments, indic ating that both cell size and the quantity of comb built are mediated throu gh the queen, particularly QMP. The observations of wax scale size suggeste d that QMP influenced comb building behaviour rather than wax scale product ion. These results support the idea that queenless honey bees can adopt a s trategy of constructing drone-sized cells in order to increase reproductive fitness through male production following queen loss.