SIGNIFICANCE: • The laying workers of the Cape honey bee continue to negatively affect the South African beekeeping industry, with more losses suffered in the northern regions of the country. • The reproductive parasites ...

No abstract available.

Recent studies have emphasized the role of the western honey bee, Apis mellifera, as a managed agricultural species worldwide, but also as a potential threat to endangered wild pollinators. This has resulted in the suggestion ...

Differentiation into castes and reproductive division of labour are a characteristics of eusocial insects. Caste determination occurs at an early stage of larval development in social bees and is achieved via differential ...

The threat to honeybee populations in the USA, Europe and Latin America over the past few years has received extensive media attention.Yet, very little is said about African honeybee populations, even though honeybees ...

Secretions from tergal glands are part of a queen’s pheromonal control of worker reproduction in honey bees. However, in queenless honey bee colonies, workers compete to gain pheromonal, and hence reproductive dominance, ...

Although pollinator declines are a global biodiversity threat, the demography of the western honeybee (Apis mellifera) has not been considered by conservationists because it is biased by the activity of beekeepers. To ...

No abstract available.

Some parasites of social insects are able to exploit the exchange of food between nestmates via trophallaxis, because they are chemically disguised as nestmates. However, a few parasites succeed in trophallactic solicitation ...

Colony losses due to social parasitism in the form of reproductive workers of the Apis mellifera capensis clones results from the production of queen-like pheromonal signals coupled with ovarian activation in these socially ...