Many social insects use pheromones to communicate and coordinate their activities. Investigation of intraspecific differences in pheromone use is a new area of social insect research. For example, interindividual variation in alarm pheromone content has been found in physical castes of...

To explore reasons for the unusually high rates of worker ovary activation in Apis cerana, we investigated the reproductive physiology of workers in conspecific and mixed-species colonies of A. cerana and its sibling species Apis mellifera under queenright and queenless conditions. In both...

In all honey bee species studied thus far, 2--4% of the workers were not born in the sampled colony. These unrelated (nonnatal) workers are thought to arise via orientation errors while returning from foraging trips. Interestingly, in colonies of the red dwarf honey bee, Apis florea, the...

Unlike most leaf-cutting ants, which have underground waste dumps, the leaf-cutting ant Atta colombica dumps waste in a heap outside the nest. Waste is hazardous, as it is contaminated with pathogens. We investigated the organization of the workforce involved in outside-nest tasks (foraging,...

Sexual selection is a dominant force in the evolution of many animals and can be particularly significant in species that mate in aerial swarms characterized by strong male--male competition. However, such mating biology, typical of many social insects, is also quite challenging to study. Here,...

Nepotism is an important potential conflict in animal societies. However, clear evidence of nepotism in the rearing of queens in social insects is limited and controversial. In the honey bee, Apis mellifera, multiple mating by queens leads to the presence of many patrilines within each colony....

Recognition of relatives is often crucial for adaptive social behavior, but availability of recognition cues may limit adaptation. Social insect workers direct altruism toward relatives through nest mate recognition. We studied whether genetic diversity increases nest mate recognition cue...