Entomology: Royal Perfume

How does a queen bee keep her colony together? In Nature, Dr. James Simpson of Rothamsted Experimental Station, England, reported that her influence is a scent more compelling than any compounded by French perfumers.

When a cluster of swarming bees is deprived of its queen, the bees soon desert to other bee colonies unless she returns. To find out why, Dr. Simpson imprisoned a queen in a wire-screen cage with double walls. He put the cage near a cluster of worried, queenless bees. The workers responded joyously. They swarmed all over the cage, vibrating their wings. But when Simpson imprisoned a queen in a small, transparent plastic bag, she had no effect on the other bees. They could see and hear her, but they ignored her completely.

This seemed to prove that the queen’s perfume is what makes the workers cluster around her, but Simpson wanted to know what part of her is most attractively scented. So he cut a queen in three pieces—abdomen, thorax and head—and put each in a separate cage. None of the three had much effect on-a queenless cluster, but when the severed parts were crushed, the workers rallied around the crushed head. So the queen’s powerful perfume must come from her head, probably from the mandibular glands.