Honey Bee Pheromones and Communication

Vocabulary flashcards covering honey bee glands, pheromone effects, chemical camouflage, communication methods, and statistical interpretation of smoke experiments.

Nasonov gland

A gland located near the tip of a worker bee's abdomen that exposes and releases a pheromone to signal to nestmates and guide them to the hive entrance.

Hypopharyngeal gland

A gland in the head of nurse bees that makes brood food, having no role in recruiting other bees.

Bee beard

The gathering of thousands of workers on a person without stinging, induced by spraying the person's clothes with synthetic queen pheromone or placing a live queen on them.

Arnhart glands

Glands located at the tips of honey bee legs.

Pheromone

A chemical used for communication between members of the same species.

Queen mandibular pheromone (QMP)

The most important queen pheromone, composed of a blend of 5 compounds that exerts both a releaser effect and a primer effect.

Releaser effect

A fast change in behavior caused by a pheromone, such as workers gathering around the queen to form her retinue.

Primer effect

A slow change in physiology caused by a pheromone, such as preventing worker bee ovaries from developing.

Death's head hawkmoth (Acherontia styx)

A moth that bypasses guards to steal honey using chemical camouflage, possessing cuticular hydrocarbons that smell close enough to honey bees for guards to treat it as a probable nestmate.

Non-chemical communication in honey bees

Communication systems distinct from pheromones, specifically including the dance language and acoustic signals such as queen piping.

Sting extension result (Smoke experiment)

The experimental finding that smoke (from burlap or hops) did not significantly reduce sting extension at any voltage, as indicated by bars of similar height with overlapping error bars.

Venom droplet result (Smoke experiment)

The experimental finding that smoke significantly reduced venom droplet production, as demonstrated at $4\,\text{V}$ and $8\,\text{V}$ where smoke treatment bars displayed different letters from the no-smoke bar.

Graph letter notation (a, b, ab, ns)

A statistical labeling system on graphs where bars sharing a letter are not significantly different, bars with different letters are significantly different, and "ns" indicates not significant.