Queen substance honey bee

In a recent statement about honey bee communication you said that if the queen was removed and queen substance was introduced into the hive, no queen cells would be formed because the workers would think that the queen was still there. I disagree with you. What are you going to do with her court? You’re not going to remove the queen without them knowing it. What queen’s substances are you going to put in the hive and where?

The queen substance is introduced into the hive by putting some of the material on a cotton ball or blotter and placing it at some point in the hive. The bees do actually form a queen court around the queen substance acting as if the cotton ball or blotter was their queen. This has been demonstrated a number of times under laboratory conditions.

The difficulty here may be that we are accustomed to thinking of the bees from the standpoint of our own intelligence and ability to think through situations. If that were the case, it would make sense that the circle of attendant bees would miss the queen and would not be fooled by the queen substance on the cotton ball, and might even pass the word on to other worker bees. We have not been able to demonstrate that honey bees have an “intelligence” as we know it, or an ability to think as we understand the thinking process. As we understand it, you might say that bees are engineered by nature to react in certain ways to certain stimuli and the queen substance is one of the most powerful stimuli affecting bees.