Honeybee response to queen mandibular pheromone in laboratory bioassays

Quantitative laboratory biosassays measuring short-range attraction of worker honeybees to pheromone-treated pipets or glass pseudo-queens are described. Each replicate involves only 15 workers, allowing a single colony to provide sufficient individuals for a complete study as well as for between-colony comparisons. The more sensitive pseudo-queen bioassay provides a measurable response at levels of queen mandibular extract of 10(-7) than that of an average individual mated queen. Formation and maintenance of the pseudo-queen's retinue, as well as more detailed behavior, can be evaluated by following the actions of individual workers replayed on video tape. Using this sensitive bioassay, the response of workers to queen mandibular pheromone has been shown to be sensitive to daily variation and colony source of the workers, but independent of worker age.