How Bees Produce and Use Pheromones

Published October 25, 2023 · Last Updated September 8, 2026

Bees, particularly honey bees, are fascinating creatures known for their complex social structures and behaviors. One of the most intriguing aspects of bee behavior is their use of pheromones. These chemical signals play a pivotal role in the hive’s communication, coordination, and survival. In this article, we delve deep into the world of bee pheromone production, understanding its significance, and exploring the various types of pheromones bees produce. Without any shared spoken language, pheromones effectively function as the hive’s own nervous system, letting tens of thousands of individual bees act together as one tightly coordinated unit.

Key Takeaways:

• Pheromones are chemical signals used by bees for communication, coordination, and defense.
• Different types of pheromones serve distinct purposes within the hive, from raising the alarm to regulating reproduction.
• Bee pheromone production is crucial for hive coordination, survival, and long-term colony health.

Table of Contents

• Introduction to Bee Pheromones
• Types of Bee Pheromones
• Alarm Pheromones
• Queen Mandibular Pheromones (QMP)
• Brood Pheromones
• Pheromone Production Glands
• Mandibular Glands
• Dufour’s Gland
• Tarsal Glands
• The Role of Pheromones in Hive Activities
• Influence of Brood Pheromone on Honey Bee Colony Establishment and Queen Replacement
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Materials and Methods
• Results
• The Intricacies of Honey Bee Pheromones
• Thought-Provoking Insights

Introduction to Bee Pheromones

Bees utilize a range of pheromones to communicate with each other. These chemical compounds are secreted by specific glands and are detected by other bees, leading to a particular behavior or response. Pheromones act as a chemical language, allowing bees to convey essential information without the need for vocal or visual cues, which is essential inside a dark, densely crowded hive where sight is of very little use.

Types of Bee Pheromones

Alarm Pheromones

When a bee feels threatened or is injured, it releases alarm pheromones. These chemicals alert nearby bees of potential danger almost instantly, prompting them to become noticeably more aggressive and defensive within seconds. The primary compound in this pheromone is isopentyl acetate, which has a distinct banana-like odor, which is part of why experienced beekeepers are generally advised to avoid eating bananas anywhere near an open hive.

Queen Mandibular Pheromones (QMP)

The queen bee produces a unique set of pheromones known as Queen Mandibular Pheromones (QMP), arguably the single most influential chemical signal found anywhere in the entire colony. These pheromones serve multiple purposes:

• Indicating the ongoing presence of a healthy, actively laying queen in the hive.
• Suppressing the development of ovaries in worker bees, keeping reproduction centralized around the queen.
• Attracting drones from surrounding areas during mating flights.

Brood Pheromones

Larvae and pupae produce brood pheromones. These pheromones communicate the brood’s developmental status and needs to the worker bees. They play a crucial role in ensuring that the brood is adequately fed and cared for, and they also help regulate how many workers get recruited into foraging duties versus nursing duties at any given time.

Pheromone Production Glands

Bees possess several glands responsible for producing different pheromones, each tuned to a distinct chemical signal and purpose. Some of the primary glands include:

Mandibular Glands

Found in both queens and workers, these glands produce pheromones used for very different purposes. In queens, they produce QMP, while in workers, they produce alarm pheromones instead, illustrating how the very same physical gland can be repurposed for entirely different chemical signals depending on caste alone.

Dufour’s Gland

Located in the abdomen, this gland produces pheromones that signal the presence of a laying worker bee in the absence of a queen, a signal that becomes especially important once a colony has gone fully queenless for an extended period of time.

Tarsal Glands

Found on the bee’s own feet, these glands produce pheromones that mark flowers, indicating to other foraging bees that the flower has already been visited recently, which helps the whole colony avoid wasting valuable energy revisiting a source that has already been drained of nectar.

The Role of Pheromones in Hive Activities

Pheromones are absolutely integral to the smooth functioning of a bee hive. They regulate numerous activities that would otherwise require far more direct contact and constant observation between bees, including:

• Mating: Drones are attracted to the queen’s pheromones during mating flights, sometimes from a considerable distance downwind, well beyond what a human observer might expect.
• Foraging: Forager bees use pheromones to communicate the location and quality of food sources, reinforcing and complementing the same information already conveyed through the waggle dance.
• Defense: Alarm pheromones rally nearby bees to defend the hive against threats within just seconds of the first bee sounding the alert.

• An Overview of Honey Bee Glands & Pheromones

Influence of Brood Pheromone on Honey Bee Colony Establishment and Queen Replacement

Abstract:

Recent observations suggest a decline in honey bee queen longevity, leading to premature supersedure and queen failure across many commercial and hobbyist operations alike. This is especially evident when beekeepers create new colonies from packages, where many queens are rejected or replaced shortly after installation. The mechanisms that trigger supersedure in honey bees remain largely unknown, but there’s a strong observed association with open brood, hinting strongly at the involvement of brood ester pheromone (BEP). In an experiment, new packages were installed into hive equipment with no treatment (Control), exposure to BEP during transport and for the first 10 days post-installation (BEP), or one frame of open brood (Brood), creating three directly comparable groups for the researchers to track. The results showed varying growth patterns among the groups. Control colonies grew the least, Brood colonies started strong but eventually leveled off, while BEP colonies began slow but maintained positive growth throughout the study, ultimately closing the early gap with the Brood group by the end of the observation period. The study also found significant differences in queen acceptance rates among the treatments, reinforcing that brood pheromone exposure genuinely changes how a package colony responds to its newly introduced queen.

Introduction:

The central role of honey bee queens in colony function makes their reduced longevity a growing concern for beekeepers of every scale, from backyard hobbyists to commercial operations. Historically, queens had a median lifespan of over 25 months, but recent trends show many queens failing to live past a single year, a substantial decline that has drawn significant attention from researchers. This has been identified as a major concern for colony mortality in the US. Factors like extreme temperature exposure during transport, disease, and pesticide exposure have been linked to these issues, though no single cause has ever been shown to fully explain the overall trend. The mechanisms governing supersedure, or queen replacement in the presence of a laying queen, are not well-understood. However, brood pheromones, especially BEP, have been identified to influence various aspects of colony social physiology, making them a very natural starting point for researchers trying to understand exactly why supersedure happens when it does.

Materials and Methods:

The study used brood ester pheromone formulated as per previous research. 45 standard 3-pound packaged bees with newly mated queens were purchased. The packages were treated with BEP or installed into hives with open brood, and their growth and queen acceptance rates were monitored over 12 weeks, giving the researchers a full season’s worth of data to compare across treatment groups.

Results:

Nearly half of the colonies raised queen cells within the first 12 weeks, a notably high rate that underscores how common early queen replacement has become. The likelihood of a colony raising queens was significantly influenced by the treatment. Brood colonies had a higher likelihood of accepting the original queen compared to BEP and Control colonies, a difference substantial enough to be practically meaningful for anyone installing new packages. The number of constructed queen cells did not seem to indicate the colony’s eagerness to replace its queen, which was somewhat counterintuitive to the researchers. The most associated variable with queen outcome over the last 4 weeks was the ratio of open brood to adult bee population, suggesting colony demographics matter more than the raw presence of queen cells alone.

The Intricacies of Honey Bee Pheromones

Honey bee pheromones are an essential aspect of their social structure, playing a pivotal role in communication within the colony. These chemical substances, secreted by an animal’s exocrine glands, elicit behavioral or physiological responses in other members of the same species. In the context of honey bees, pheromonal messages are typically directed at members of the same colony, but there are exceptions where the target can be from another colony, such as when a robbing bee is detected trying to steal honey from a hive that is not its own.

The honey bee society is a composite organization comprising three adult castes: the queen, worker, and male (drone), as well as the non-self-sufficient brood. This intricate structure necessitates a sophisticated communication system among colony members, and pheromones are the linchpin in this mechanism. They are involved in virtually every facet of honey bee colony life, from development and reproduction to foraging, defense, and orientation, functioning almost like a distributed nervous system spread across tens of thousands of individual bees.

There are two primary types of pheromones in honey bees: primer pheromones and releaser pheromones. Primer pheromones act on a physiological level, inducing long-term responses in the receiver, leading to both developmental and behavioral changes. Releaser pheromones, on the other hand, have a more transient effect, influencing the receiver only at the behavioral level, more like an immediate instruction than a lasting physiological shift.

The queen bee, as the primary regulator of colony functions, employs pheromones produced by various glands. These pheromones, collectively known as the “queen signal,” primarily function as primer pheromones. They induce several physiological and behavioral modifications in the worker bees, ensuring the maintenance of colony homeostasis, establishment of social hierarchy, and preservation of the queen’s reproductive dominance. Workers surrounding the queen, known as her retinue, constantly groom and feed her while continuously picking up and redistributing this chemical signal throughout the entire hive.

The queen mandibular pheromone (QMP) is the most extensively studied chemical signal in the honey bee society. It plays multiple roles, from attracting workers to form the retinue group to acting as a sexual pheromone for drone attraction during mating flights. Furthermore, QMP suppresses both queen supersedure (replacement of the queen) and swarming, which is why a sudden, unexpected drop in QMP output is often one of the earliest warning signs that a queen is failing.

In addition to the queen’s pheromones, the brood also emits pheromones that play a role in suppressing worker ovary development. This intricate dance of chemical signals ensures the smooth functioning of the honey bee society, from the individual bee to the entire colony, and researchers continue to identify entirely new compounds and interactions within this system even today.

Thought-Provoking Insights:

1. The Role of Pheromones in Social Insects: The honey bee’s reliance on pheromones for communication is a striking testament to the importance of chemical signals throughout the animal kingdom. How do other social insects, such as ants and termites, utilize pheromones, and how do their communication systems compare to that of honey bees?
2. The Queen’s Dominance: The queen bee’s ability to regulate the entire colony through pheromones is genuinely fascinating to observe. What would happen in the absence of these pheromones, and how would the colony adapt in the short and long term?
3. Brood’s Influence on Worker Bees: It’s intriguing that not just the queen, but also the developing brood, can influence worker bee behavior through pheromones of their own. How does this dynamic play out in real-world scenarios, especially when the colony faces sudden threats, resource scarcity, or other significant changes in its environment?