Abstract
In honeybee colonies, pheromones produced by the host’s queen inhibit worker reproductive potential and queen rearing. Here, we showed that worker bees fed with syrup containing high concentrations of the phenolic quercetin are likely to initiate ovarian development and to build many queen cells in their colony throughout the feeding trial. Workers fed syrup containing high levels of quercetin were aggresive against their queen. Our study suggests that increased phenolic compounds in nectar could enhance worker bee resistance to queen signals in honeybee colonies.
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Acknowledgement
We thank Xuewen Zhang for assistance in the feeding trail. We also thank Dr. David Roubik and three anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier version of the manuscript. This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2007CB411603) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30870445).
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Gao, J., Zhao, G., Yu, Y. et al. High Concentration of Nectar Quercetin Enhances Worker Resistance to Queen’s Signals in Bees. J Chem Ecol 36, 1241–1243 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-010-9866-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-010-9866-3