ABSTRACT
Honey bees are the grandmasters of chemical communication in the insect world. To human observers the most obvious and unmistakable honey bee pheromone is the alarm pheromone emanating from the sting. The complex nature of honey bee defensive behavior has stimulated the development of a wide variety of bioassays to measure defensiveness. Alarm pheromones of honey bees have chemical similarities to alarm pheromone components of some ant species. Alarm and Nasonov pheromones share several chemical features in common, features that differ from those of typical sex or other pheromones. The culmination of the honey bee reproductive process is the production of a swarm which issues from the parent colony and seeks a new nest site. Large social insect colonies as typified by honey bees have a number of advantages, as well as disadvantages, over insects that are solitary or live in small colonies.
