Honeybees live in social groups consisting of a queen, up to several hundred male drones, and thousands of infertile female workers. The drones mate with the queen only, and the workers protect the hive, forage, and feed and groom the queen. The health of the hive depends on the female workers performing these duties instead of reproducing. What roles do pheromones play in maintaining a functional beehive? Researchers observed that the queen produces a pheromone that attracts both drones and workers. They hypothesized that this pheromone inhibits ovarian development in the workers, making the workers infertile. To test this hypothesis, they exposed workers to a synthetic version of the queen pheromone and then recorded their 'ovary development score.' (Higher scores indicate more fully developed ovaries.) The results are shown in the graph here. Do these results support the researchers' hypothesis? Why or why not? (*** signifies P<0.001.)

Video transcript

Hi everyone. Let's look at our next problem. It says the queen bee has a crucial role in the colony. Without it the colony will decline. The workers will stop performing their activities and the colony will become disorganized for workers. What is the cue that tells them the queen is already old or sick? Well let's recall from the content videos. How does the queen regulate the colony and keep everything going? That's through the production of pheromones, chemical signals that the bees received through chemo receptors. And so therefore the thing that tells the Q. That tells the workers that the queen is older. Sick is that this production becomes very low and or if the queen actually dies there will be no more paramount's produced. And when that happens when the pheromone production drops down to a low level or is absent. Um Workers will be driven to produce a new queen from the young brood Within 12 to 24 hours. So again those pheromones organized the activity of the entire hive. And when they drop low that gives the workers the cue that it's time to produce a new queen. So when we look at our answer choices, we C. Choice D. Is the low pheromone signal. And that is our answer. So the other answer choices. The low production of eggs. Low buzzing sound of the queen and immobility of the queen are not signals for the workers, it is solely the low pheromone signal. As the pheromones are the way she coordinates the activities of the entire hive. See you in the next video