Queen honeybees ‘brainwash’ young drones to behave

QUEEN honeybees rule over a Brave New World society where workers are literally brainwashed to behave, scientists have learned.

The queen exerts her power by producing an aromatic chemical that inhibits negative tendencies in the young nurse drones who feed and groom her. By preventing them from acquiring aggressive traits, she ensures the hive remains a haven of order, peace and harmony.

The brainwashing compound controls learned aggressive behaviour in the naive young bees and avoids conflict, researchers from New Zealand reported in the journal Science.

Caste systems are well known in populations of ants, bees, wasps and termites, but the kind of brainwashing seen in honeybees takes behaviour control among social insects to a new level.

Queen honeybees produce a pheromone from their mandibles containing a complex cocktail of chemicals.

One of these, a compound called homovanillyl alcohol, is used by the queen to brainwash her slaves, said the New Zealand team led by Dr Vanina Vergoz, from the University of Otago in Dunedin.

The chemical blocks the acquisition of negative memories which would normally trigger an aggressive “sting reflex” in the bees.

In tests, young bees were taught to associate a particular odour with an electric shock. Thereafter when they were exposed to the odour, they unsheathed their stings — but not if they had first been exposed to the queen bee’s mandibular pheromone. Bees given a sniff of the pheromone remained docile.

A neurobiologist said he was reminded of Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World, in which people are conditioned from birth to perform different roles in society.

Dr Giovanni Galizia, from the University of Konstanz in Germany, wrote: “Among other things, lower castes are programmed not to be aggressive against higher caste members.”