Honeybees possess a structurally diverse and functionally redundant set of queen pheromones

Queen pheromones, which signal the presence of a fertile queen and induce workers to remain sterile, play a key role in regulating reproductive division of labour in insect societies. In the honeybee, volatiles produced by the queen’s mandibular glands have been argued to act as the primary sterility-inducing pheromones. This contrasts with evidence from other groups of social insects, where specific queen-characteristic hydrocarbons present on the cuticle act as conserved queen signals. This led us to hypothesise that honeybee queens might also employ cuticular pheromones to stop workers from reproducing. Here we support this hypothesis with the results of bioassays with synthetic blends of queen-characteristic alkenes, esters, and carboxylic acids. We show that all these compound classes suppress worker ovary development, and that one of the blends of esters that we used was as effective as the queen mandibular pheromone (QMP) mix. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the two main QMP com...

蜂王信息素（queen pheromones）可传递可育蜂王存在的信号，并诱导工蜂保持不育状态，在昆虫社会的生殖分工调控中发挥核心作用。在蜜蜂中，蜂王下颌腺产生的挥发物曾被认为是主要的不育诱导信息素。这一结论与其他社会性昆虫类群的研究证据相悖：在这些类群中，体表表皮（cuticle）上存在的蜂王特征性烃类物质是保守的蜂王信号分子。这一差异促使我们提出假说：蜜蜂蜂王或许同样会借助体表信息素抑制工蜂繁殖。本研究通过使用蜂王特征性烯烃、酯类与羧酸的人工合成混合物开展生物测定（bioassays），验证了这一假说。实验结果表明，上述三类化合物均能抑制工蜂卵巢发育，且我们使用的其中一种酯类混合物的效果与蜂王下颌腺信息素（queen mandibular pheromone, QMP）相当。此外，我们还证实，QMP的两种主要组成...