Abstract
That the queen might modulate the behaviour of a honeybee colony is implicit in the ancient and regal names for this reproductive insect. However, the possibility that the queen bears a specific relationship to the synthesis and secretion of wax as well as to comb-building is a more recent idea. Indeed, De Reaumur (1740) was the first to note that a caged colony of queenless bees had constructed comb after 2 days’ confinement. However, he had given the bees some queen cells and, unfortunately, we do not know how long the bees had been queenless prior to their incarceration or whether they had been given any other brood.
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© 1986 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Hepburn, H.R. (1986). The Queen. In: Honeybees and Wax. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-71458-0_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-71458-0_14
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-71460-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-71458-0
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