masthead1.gif (18923 bytes)

next page Laboratory home page laboratory facilities what do we study? who is in the laboratory?social insect and apiculture links
sub11.gif (2012 bytes)
research
     
Dr Francis L.W.Ratnieks

 

Worker policing in the honey bee

Honey bee eggs are held in open cells and can easily be inspected by worker bees. Most eggs laid by workers are "policed", that is eaten, by other workers, as shown here

Worker policing 1
1
Most eggs laid by the queen are not policed. Police workers can recognize worker-laid eggs because queen-laid eggs are marked by a special queen pheromone worker policing 2
2
When a worker-laid egg is laid and removed, the queen will normally lay an egg in the vacant cell within  a few days. "
(Ratnieks 1988, 1993, 1995, Oldroyd & Ratnieks 2000, Ratnieks & Visscher 1989)		 worker policing 3
3
Queen honey bee laying an egg. The queen, who has a red paint dot on her thorax to make her easy to locate, has her abdomen in a cell and is laying an egg. The queen can control the sex of the egg she lays
(Ratnieks and Keller 1998)		 honey bee queen laying an egg
4

Professor Francis Ratnieks
Department of Animal and Plant Sciences,
University of Sheffield,Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
tel: 0114 2220070 (office), 01142 220147 (Lab. office),
01142220149 (Lab/postdocs/students), 0114 2220002 (fax)
e-mail: F.Ratnieks@Sheffield.ac.uk
(when dialing from ouside UK the country code is 44; also delete the 0 in the 0114 city code)

NEWSLETTER

"tis nobler...to suffer the stings" (Shakespeare)