# Is it possible that defensiveness/aggression in bees could also be caused by age/quality of a queen?



## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Lucia said:


> "In this study, we examine the influence of workers' distance from the queen on their reproductive, pheromonal and behavioural characteristics. Our results demonstrate that with increasing distance from the queen, workers increasingly develop behavioural and reproductive traits characteristic of queenlessness, which are presumably the result of significant impairment in queen pheromone transmission." One of the other results that were disscussed was that aggression also increased the further the bees were from the queen. Is it possible that an older queen who is producing less pheromones has the effect of creating a more defensive colony that is already successful and not having other problems? Could queen quality/age be a factor in hives that are particularly more aggressive than others? I know genetics, abundance of food, and queenlessness also factor into the aggressiveness of a hive.


I have seen the hypothesis that a queens stored semen from multiple drones is not a homogenous mixture and that certain drones genetics might present in waves. Dunno about that; I have noted that as the season wears on there does seem to be a slight increase in aggressiveness but older bees then are a higher percentage of what we are dealing with.

A queen whose laying is decreasing would result in a similar shift in demographics to older average age of the bees. Dunno!


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Do you mind to post a link to the referenced study?

I'd be interested in reading it!


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## Lucia (Feb 16, 2021)

Distance from the queen affects workers' selfish behaviour in the honeybee (A. mellifera) colony on JSTOR


Margarita Orlova, Abraham Hefetz, Distance from the queen affects workers' selfish behaviour in the honeybee (A. mellifera) colony, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Vol. 68, No. 10 (October 2014), pp. 1693-1700




www.jstor.org


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

It makes sense to me that it could very well be a contributing factor among others such as genetics and environmental factors.


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## ursa_minor (Feb 13, 2020)

I am new so take my observations with a grain of salt. 

When we have an aggressive colony the advice is to immediately re-queen and that fixes it. I often wondered how that is stated with such confidence when we have no idea if the new queen will have the genetics to be calm. She is, after all, a combination of genes from unknown drones. Yet, from what I have read and been told, the change does result in a calmer colony. This would explain some of that.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

I think seasonality has more bearing.
as the season progresses, they have more bees and more stores to protect.
early smallish hives do not seem to have the same mood and late july aug. larger hives.

same idea with a NUC most seem calmer.
when I ran 2 queen hives there were testy as well, so size matters, they can stand to loose 100 bees to defend and seems very willing to do the same.

GG


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## ShelleyStuart (Jan 4, 2010)

I can see this as a benefit to hobbyists to run smaller hives than a traditional double-deep. That comes with its own conundrums, but it's just no fun working testy bees.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

@Lucia:

Thank you for posting the abstract- I appreciate it. I found a full-text version here: Distance from the queen affects workers’ selfish behaviour in the honeybee (A. mellifera) colony - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

I few interesting tidbits:

_Studies have been performed by analysing, both experimentally and using mathematical models, the effects of high population density and colony congestion on pheromone transmission (Winston et al. 1991; Naumann et al. 1993; Watmough 1997; Watmough et al. 1998). These studies indicate that in congested colonies, QMP transmission is impaired, by showing that the amount of (E)-9-oxodec-2-enoic acid (9-ODA), QMP’s main component, found on workers’ body surfaces declines in congested colonies compared to normally dense ones. Studies assessing the effect of high population density and colony congestion on swarming have also been performed, showing indirectly that colony congestion apparently inhibits pheromone transmission, thus presumably alleviating the inhibition of queen rearing and inducing swarming. It was further shown that artificially improving the transmission of QMP restores the inhibition (Winston et al. 1991).

Under the hypothesis that effectiveness of the queen pheromone diminishes with distance from the queen, we would expect that remote and peripheral areas of the hive have a potential for “queenlessness”, i.e. for disruption of a harmonious social structure and for weakening of reproductive restraint by workers. In our experiment, these expectations were fulfilled when workers residing in compartments remote from the queen displayed increased reproductive activity, increased production of the fertility signal and increased aggression (which in the queen’s compartment was virtually non-existent).

Our results have shown that ovarian development and fertility signal production in workers increased with the distance from the queen’s compartment. 

In our study, workers placed in the queen’s compartment at the beginning of the experiment were shown to be far less likely to move away from the queen than those placed at a distance from the queen, thus refuting the “queen escape hypothesis”. The greater ovarian development in workers moving away from the queen than those approaching the queen, and in workers that did not move, seems to be a consequence rather than a cause of their movement. We suggest that that movement away from the queen was due to the diminished attractive effect of QMP as a queen signal over distance._


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## Lucia (Feb 16, 2021)

Litsinger said:


> @Lucia:
> 
> Thank you for posting the abstract- I appreciate it. I found a full-text version here: Distance from the queen affects workers’ selfish behaviour in the honeybee (A. mellifera) colony - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
> 
> ...


thanks for posting it I had access to the article through my library but I could not find a way to post it for everyone to see the whole article


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## JustBees (Sep 7, 2021)

So then this is the mechanism in play where the bees seem to thrive in a 5 frame box, over a 10.
Even a 5 over 5 will do better than a 10 early on.
This seems likely due to the distribution and strength of the QMP and how it is shared in the hive.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

It would take about six weeks to replace the old bees when requeening, yet I often see a hot hive calm down almost immediately. Well before ANY of her offspring have emerged. I wonder if some bees are genetically more susceptible to aggression when exposed to a queen having low pheromones.


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