Bees Sniff Out Mates

Male honey bees find mating opportunities by sniffing them out, new research suggests.

Queen bees emit a scent known as the “queen retinue pheromone,” and a research team at the University of Illinois has identified a scent receptor male drones use to home in on it. The receptor, on the male antennae, can detect an available queen up to 200 feet away.

Out of the honey bee's 170 receptors, researchers narrowed the search for this mating receptor to four that were found in much higher quantities in males than females. Still, determining which of the four primary receptors in males responded to the queen was a formidable challenge.

"That’s where we were very, very lucky," said Hugh Robertson of the University of Illinois.

The investigators then turned to a technique used to probe frog receptors. After refining the technique for insects, they exposed each of the drone receptors to the queen retinue pheromone, which elicited a response in only one of the four.

The study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to link one of the receptors to a specific pheromone in honey bees.

Robertson called the discovery "thrilling," but added that they still had another 169 receptors to investigate.

—LiveScience Staff

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