Honeybee selectivity

Keener, J.A. and C.D. Pless. 1974. Effects of direct application of selected pesticides on honeybee colonies. Tenn. Farm Home Sci. 89 5-8. 

Nation, J.L., F.A. Robinson, S.J. Yu, and A.B. Bolten. 1986. Influence upon honeybees of chronic exposure to very low levels of selected insecticides in their diet. Jour. Apicult. Res. 25 170-177. 

Plettner E., Slessor K. N., Winston M. L. and Oliver J. E. (1996) Caste-selective pheromone biosynthesis in honeybees. Science 271, 1851-1853. 

Sensitization of honeybees by sucrose stimulation led to an overall increase of Ca2+ signals in PNs (Weidert et al., 2001). The PNs were selectively labeled with a calcium-sensitive dye (see below) and the response in activated glomeruli was significantly stronger than in control animals. Hence, neural correlates of both associative and non-associative processes are formed already at the level of the AL. A sensitized animal will be in a state more ready to pay attention to environmental stimuli, e.g. foodsearch. 

Lewis, L.A., Schneider, S.S. and Degrandi-Hoffman, G. (2002). Factors influencing the selection of recipients by workers performing vibration signals in colonies of the honeybee, Apis mellifera. Anim. Behav., 63, 361-367. 

Pheromonal dominance and the selection of a socially parasitic honeybee worker lineage (Apis mellifera capensis Esch.)../. Evol. Biol., 20, 997-1007. 

Phelan, P.L., Smith, A. W. and Needham, G. R. (1991). Mediation of host selection by cuticular hydrocarbons in the honeybee tracheal mite Acarapis woodi (Rennie). 

Thus far, more than 1700 compounds from around 1000 plant species have been identified as floral volatiles.84 Twelve compounds in particular, namely, limonene, ( )-/ -ocimene, /3-myrcene, a-pinene, /3-pinene, linalool, 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one, /3-caryophyllene, benzyl alcohol, 2-phenylethanol, benzaldehyde, and methyl salicylate, have been found to occur in more than 50% of the plant families investigated, and these are regarded as the most common floral volatiles. Various insects use these ubiquitous volatiles for flower selection, for example, honeybee, butterfly, and moth commonly show preferential responses to linalool, benzaldehyde, and/or phenylacetaldehyde contained in the floral scents of various plants.85-87 These volatiles not only serve as important floral cues by themselves but also contribute to the floral scents unique to each plant species, which are distinguishable for flower visitors. On the other hand, it has recently been revealed that several plant species are pollinated exclusively by particular insect species, and that the floral scents play important roles in such pollination. 

Furthermore, insecticide selectivity is also observed in the honeybee, which is known to be very susceptible to pesticides, although various detoxifying enzymes including... 

Producte of normal metabolism, particularly those of the fatty acid and isoprenoid pathways, were modified by a few pheromone gland-specific enzymes to produce the myriad of pheromone molecules. The elegant work of the Roelofs laboratory [21] demonstrated that many of the lepidopteran pheromones could be formed by the appropriate interplay of highly selective chain shortening of fatty acids and a unique delta-11 desaturase enzyme followed by modification of the carboxyl carbon (see Fig. 5). Chain shortening of fatty acids is also involved in producing the queen pheromone in honeybees [69, 70]. 

Taking advantage of the fact that the cost of adaptation slows growth and reproduction can lead to surprisingly practical results. For example, there is a parasitic mite, Varroa destructor, that causes heavy losses in honeybees. There are several different miticides available for beekeepers to use to kill the mites. If one such miticide kills 99.9% of the mites, selection pressure ensures that resistant mites will dominate the population in a few generations. Therefore, this particular miticide would soon be useless. 

Although cucurbitacins serve as allomones for most other insects, these compounds are kairomones, or attractants, for many insects associated with the Cucurbitaceae (Metcalf, 1985). For example, when cucumber beetles are offered a choice of nonbitter and bitter (cucurbitacin containing) fruits, they feed almost exclusively on the bitter fruits (11 1). When given the same choice, the honeybee. Apis mellif-era, will select food materials lacking the cucurbitacins (Har-bome, 1982). 

In the past two years we were able to incorporate into lipid bilayers a light sensitive pigment extracted from the honeybee compound eye (Gambale et al., 1977). In this paper we report further measurements indicating that cation selective pathways are formed in the membrane upon incorporation of the photopigment in the dark. 

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