Reproductive traits and mandibular gland pheromone of anarchistic honey bee workers Apis mellifera occurring in China

In honey bee colonies, workers, in particular of “anarchistic” lineages, can activate their ovaries and lay eggs, even in the presence of the queen. We identified three queenright colonies showing typical signs of worker reproduction. To characterize this new lineage, we extracted the mandibular gland and analyzed it using gas chromatography. The total amounts of the five main components of the mandibular gland, namely methyl p-hydroxyben-zoate (HOB), 9-oxo-2(E)-decenoic acid (9-ODA), (S)-9-hydroxy-(E)-2-decenoic acid (9-HDA), 10-HDA, and 10-hydroxyde-canoic acid (10-HDAA) were significantly higher in the mandibular gland profiles of workers with activated ovaries (AWs, 8.88 ± 1.71 μg) compared to workers with inactivated ovaries (IAWs, 4.00 ± 2.09 μg). Furthermore, the chemical profiles of IAWs were dominated by the “worker substances” 10-HDA (34.64 ± 8.19 %) and its precursor 10-HDAA (22.88 ± 4.95 %), while the chemical profiles in AWs were dominated by the precursor of the queen substance 9-HDA (40.04 ± 7.55 %). The ratios of two precursor substances 10-HDAA/9-HDA of IAWs were more worker like (>1.0) whereas AWs were more queen like (≤1.0). These results suggest that the mandibular pheromones of anarchistic workers resemble a more queen-like reproductive active profile and that these workers may represent a reversion to a more basal reproductive phenotype.