Beejoy Beekeeping Newsletter - Spring 2025
- Grai St. Clair Rice
- May 22
- 6 min read
Spring Bouquet of Pheromones
Spring is in the air with unblushing abandon. Pollen and the seduction of flowers are everywhere. Wafting bouquets of sweetness fill the breeze with nuance.
In the honeybee world, swarm season offers its own unique spring bouquets in the form of pheromones, both within and outside the hive, which orchestrate honeybee behavior.
Pheromones play a vital role in the life of a honeybee colony. These chemical signals, produced by different glands, provide a means of communication for the cohesive functioning and homeostasis of the colony, as well as the continuance of the species thru their function in the reproductive life of honeybee colonies.
A colony’s queen, with her complex mix of pheromones called the “Queen Signal,” is the main regulator of the activities within the hive. A strong “signal” stimulates foraging, brood-rearing and comb building, and maintains the reproductive supremacy of the queen.
During swarm season, when new virgin queens are emerging, the “bouquet” of their queen pheromones are dynamic, evolving sensory signals until she becomes established as a mated-laying queen bee. Initially, a virgin needs to be accepted by the workers, be victorious in battles with other virgins, and then be fed while her physiology matures. A virgin reaches sexual maturity at 5 - 10 days old, when she initiates her mating flights exuding chemical volatiles to seduce the drones.
A virgin is ripe with a bouquet of Queen Mandibular Pheromone (QMP) saturated with specific compounds attractive to drones in flight. The components and levels of QMP shift once a queen is mated and reigns the hive. Once she is actively laying other glands and secretions are also engaged to influence the colony’s workers.
Drones, in Drone Congregation Areas (DCAs), exhibit their own “drone odor bouquet” en masse, which lures virgins to the mating area. A virgin will streak through the congregation of drones, leaving a trail of pheromones for them to follow.
Volatile, seductive molecules on the breeze everywhere, in a spring bouquet of pheromones.
Spring Beekeeping Tasks
Split Strong Colonies Before They Swarm
Creating a manual swarm, moving the established queen into a new hive box, can help you retain your bees. You can always merge them again later, if you don’t want to expand your yard.
Create Small Colonies with Queen Cells
Creating small colonies with queen cells can provide a buffer against a future queen issue, if you need to requeen or help out a friend.
Protect Hives Against Robbing
Feeding hives internally is the safest way to keep other hungry bees away, if feeding is required, especially during times of dearth.
Monitor and Treat for Mites Early
Drones are in abundance in spring, and can potentially produce a plethora of Varroa mites. Keep an eye on the mite count. Best not to treat during honey flow and in the presence of queen cells.
Plant a Flowering Tree or Shrub
Spring is the time to add forage for the long term, before the heat and dryness of summer. Don't forget to water well thru the first season. Honeybees prefer a mass of blossoms due to their foraging behavior thus trees and shrubs can make good choices, that get better every year.
Make sure your hives are level after winter
Frost heave and spring rains can mess with the level of hives. Hives can be tilted forward slightly to allow water to drip off entrance, however should be level side to side for comb building.
Identifying Queen Status
A virgin queen has distinct traits that can be observed, and are physically and behaviorally different than a reigning queen. For a beekeeper inspecting a hive, these are helpful to take note of.
A newly emerged virgin has to carry out a hunt and kill mission against other potential virgins, in order to establish her place in the hive. Piping and quacking of queens in a hive alert others to the existence and battle call of emerging queens.
Virgins will not be surrounded by a retinue of workers that are feeding and preening her. She will be dashing around the hive in a determined frenzy. Once other virgins have been eliminated, she can get her bearings walking around the hive while she matures for mating.
Her abdomen will have a triangular shape to it, unlike the elongated abdomen of a mated queen full of developing eggs and semen.
Kate Anton, in the Groningen Lab at Penn State, photographed the same queen, first in her virgin state and then in her mated state, which illustrates the different abdominal shapes.
Beekeepers often get anxious when a change of queen is occurring in a colony. Anything can happen to a virgin on mating flights, preventing a queen from safely returning to her hive. Additionally, mating with multiple drones with sufficient genetic diversity is not a given, depending on surrounding colonies.
Beekeepers should be on the lookout at hive entrances on sunny warm days full of activity, as they may experience the thrill of observing a queen returning to a hive with the “Mating Sign,” the endophallus of the last drone.
Once properly mated, there is still a waiting game as the new queen continues to raise her level of Vitellogenin (Vg), develops her eggs and establishes her “plumbing” of oviduct and spermatheca for depositing fertile versus infertile eggs.
When egg-laying commences, there is additional time until the first worker brood is capped before a beekeeper can exude a sigh of relief that the new queen is well on her way.
A Glimpse at Pheromone Communication
A reigning honey bee queen is the main influencer in a colony. The workers collectively are the decision-makers in the hive; however, the queen is their reason for being and doing.
All animals communicate via pheromones, which are chemical signals that influence the behavior of another individual, as opposed to hormones that are chemical signals that act inside that individual animal. Humans are animals too, with hormones and pheromones at work. Even though it’s unlikely people identify themselves as such very often, there are a plethora of nuances in the mix.
In the publication "Neurobiology of Chemical Communication," in their chapter on chemical communication in the honey bee society, Drs. Laura Bortolotti and Cecilia Costa from the Apidology Research Group clearly explain, “In honey bees, as in other animals, there are two types of pheromones: primer pheromones and releaser pheromones. Primer pheromones act at a physiological level, triggering complex and long-term responses in the receiver and generating both developmental and behavioral changes. Releaser pheromones have a weaker effect, generating a simple and transitory response that influences the receiver only at the behavioral level.”
When a colony loses its queen, the activity in the hive becomes scrambled. Sometimes the colony becomes lethargic, or seemingly hopeless and screaming. Sometimes multiple laying workers activate their infertile ovaries to lay drone eggs in hopes of sustaining the colony to no avail; however, the energy in the hive will be off.
As a beekeeper, once you become familiar with the natural vibration and activity of a healthy hive, you will know when to question if something is wrong by watching and listening. If there is a healthy queen and enough food for brood, every bee has a task, and the hive hums along, communicating as they do so well via pheromones and vibration.
Humans sense the allure and harnessing potential of pheromones, from which has developed the vast fragrance industry. Human emotion and memory recall are stirred by aroma, as noted throughout literature. Fashion advertising packages these sensations, engaging “releaser pheromones” as identity, with fragrance names such as “212 Sexy Men” cologne and “Queen Bee” perfume.
Love and lust exude chemical substances, and so does fear. It is well accepted that dogs and horses sense fear chemicals, as well as happiness in humans. Honeybees are exceptionally sensitive to chemical signals, and while they don’t “smell fear,” it is understood that they can detect human pheromones associated with fear, raising an alarm condition in the hive. The deduction follows that honeybees can also sense love.
Enjoy the exciting newness of the season! Stay tuned for the next beekeeping newsletter...
Focus on learning new things about your honeybees and other pollinators.
Citations & Links
Adapted from Goodman, L. (2003) Form and Function in the Honey Bee.Cardiff, UK: IBRA.) Permission: Chemical Communication in the Honey Bee Society, Laura Bortolotti and Cecilia Costa.
Neurobiology of Chemical Communication. Mucignat-Caretta C, editor. Boca Raton (FL): CRC Press/Taylor & Francis; 2014. Chapter 5: Chemical Communication in the Honey Bee Society, Laura Bortolotti and Cecilia Costa. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK200983/
Anton, K. (2022, December 8). An Introduction to Queen Honey Bee Development. Penn State Extension.
Bastin, F., Cholé, H., Lafon, G. et al. Virgin queen attraction toward males in honey bees. Sci Rep 7, 6293 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-06241-9
About the Author:
Grai St. Clair Rice
Grai has been a beekeeping educator since 2006. She teaches beekeeping classes, coaches beekeepers, does public presentations, writes about honey bees and gardening for pollinators, publishes the Beejoy beekeeping newsletter, and consults on landscape plantings.
