C-6-1

A SECOND QUEEN HONEY BEE PHEROMONE

Christopher I. Keeling¹, Erika Plettner¹, RonT.K. Cheng¹, Keith N. Slessor¹, and Mark L. Winston²
Departments of Chemistry¹ and Biological Sciences²,Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6

Honey bee queens (Apis mellifera L.) produce pheromones to controlseveral aspects of colony behaviour. The mandibular gland is thesource of the five component queen mandibular pheromone (QMP). Workerhoney bees in both colony or laboratory situations show no significantdifference in response to synthetic QMP and to queen mandibular gland extract. However, a live queen is always superior to synthetic QMP or a mandibulargland extract, suggesting an additional source of pheromones in the queen. Recent experiments have confirmed the existence of a second queen pheromoneand have shown that its source is in the head of the queen honey bee, butnot in the mandibular gland. Separation and chemical modificationof the queen head extract followed by bioassay have provided clues to thechemical nature of this second queen honey bee pheromone.