Conflict and Cooperation in Honey Bees: Queen Piping and Afterswarming

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The high level of coordination shown by social insect colonies is of both economic and theoretical interest: The social events in honey bee colonies underlie bees' usefulness as pollinators and honey producers, and our ability to manage them successfully. At the same time, this coordination presents a special puzzle to evolutionary theory, since intra-colony conflict is expected in some circumstances. Genetic differences between individuals in colonies mean that any particular way of dividing the colony's resources among the reproductives will produce different genetic payoffs for different individuals, leading to conflicting interests between them. This study examines the production of swarms by honey bee colonies, with particular attention to the piping behavior of queen bees, a phenomenon long observed but never adequately explained. The study tests a hypothesis that worker bees, by manipulating the options available, redirect the interests of newly-reared queen bees into alignment with the workers' own interests. This turns a situation of conflicting benefits to different individuals into one of common, though lesser, benefits. The study tests the role of queen piping as communication of the factors that direct this realignment of interests. The research will contribute to a general theory of social behavior by testing how selection at the level of individuals can lead to traits at the level of groups, and how the barriers to evolution of highly cooperative behavior may be crossed. It will increase our understanding of honey bee reproductive behavior, which forms the basis for genetic management of bees.