IANS

Sydney, Aug 5: Researchers have unravelled the mysteries of why and how the queen bee controls the behaviour of her workers.

University of Otago zoologists two years ago discovered that queen bees manipulate their offspring's behaviour by releasing a pheromone that blocks aversive learning in young bees.

Alison Mercer, professor at Otago with Kyle Beggs, have now identified the molecular target of this pheromone.

Queen pheromone - or more specifically a significant component of it, called homovanillyl alcohol or HVA - activates just one of three honey bee dopamine receptors, altering dopamine signalling in the brain and, consequently, the behaviour of young bees.

One of HVA's effects is to curb young bees' aversive learning ability (their ability to store the memory of unpleasant experiences in the brain and, consequently, to predict punishment).

Why does the queen do this? Her pheromones have unpleasant effects; they impair motor activity and block worker ovary development.

Preventing young bees from developing aversive memories against the queen's odours ensures that young bees continue to tend to the queen - thus safeguarding the future of the queen and, ultimately, the colony.

"Evolution has provided queen bees with a chemical that selectively blocks aversive learning but leaves reward learning intact," said Mercer. "Two years ago we identified which chemical was responsible for these effects, and now we have discovered how the chemical works."

Establishing a link between changes at the behavioural level and events at a cellular and molecular level is generally very difficult because the processes underlying events such as learning and memory are complex.

These findings were published in Current Biology.