Bee Discovery

[piccioni]

I found this interesting, so I thought I'd pass it along. The title is "New pheromone creates buzz about the clout of older bees"
and is about a Michigan State researcher who discovered how nurse bees become foragers.
Here is the linik http://special.newsroom.msu.edu/bees/index.html

[forestbee]

Very interesting article, I wonder how can we use this information to have more forager bees in the hive, first thing came to my mine is that is a one more reason to have upper entrance during the flow which most of the foragers will use which will lead to less concentration of this pheromone in the brood nest so more of the nursing bees will go foraging during the flow.

[This message has been edited by forestbee (edited December 14, 2004).]

[db_land]

Very interesting discovery. It explains a lot about beehavior and raises a lot of other questions like: 1) Where doe the foragers get ethyl oleate? Do some flowers have more? 2) Would a lack of ethyl oleate in the environment result in larger forager bee population? 3) Does feeding with sugar syrup provide more or less ethyl oleate in the bees diet? 4) How does ethyl oleate affect the queen and drone bees? ....