Abstract Queens were important figures within the court communities of pre-Norman England, their status defined by relationship to king, whether as queen-consort, queen-mother, queen-regent, or queen-dowager. These positions with an attendant degree prestige and authority, but a vulnerability vicissitudes king’s fortunes. Often this would lead periods exile from community. Such exiled queens co...

Worker honeybees, Apis mellifera, police each other's reproduction by killing worker-laid eggs. Previous experiments demonstrated that worker policing is effective, killing most (∼98%) worker-laid eggs. However, many queen-laid eggs were also killed (∼50%) suggesting that effective policing may have high costs. In these previous experiments, eggs were transferred using forceps into test cells, ...

There has been much speculation about which phenotypic traits serve as reliable indicators of productivity in queen honeybees (Apis mellifera). To investigate the predictive value of queen body weight on colony development and quality, we compared colonies in which queens weighed less than 180 mg to those in which queens weighed more than 200 mg. Both groups contained naturally mated and instru...

Queen pheromones are chemical signals produced by reproductive individuals in social insect colonies. In many species they are key to the maintenance of reproductive division of labor, with workers beginning to reproduce individually once the queen pheromone disappears. Recently, a queen pheromone that negatively affects worker fecundity was discovered in the bumblebee Bombus terrestris, presen...

Temporary polygyny (the presence of multiple queens) occurs in honeybee colonies when virgin queens (VQs) are reared for reproductive swarming or queen replacement. During these events, workers perform vibration signals on queen cells and emerged queens, and these signals may influence which VQ becomes the new laying queen of a colony. We examined the role of vibration signals during queen comp...

strawberry (fragaria ananassa duch.) is a good source of natural antioxidants. fruits from eight strawberry (fragaria ananassa duch.) cultivars (‘kurdistan’, ‘merck’, ‘camarosa’, ‘paros’, ‘queen elisa’, ‘ventana’, ‘selva’ and ‘pajaro’) were harvested at ripen stage and analyzed for total phenolic content, total anthocyanin content, vitamin c, total soluble solid and total antioxidant activity. ...

Algorithms: Backtracking This algorithm searches through all possible placements of queens until it finds a valid one. It starts by placing one queen in the first column and first row, then tries to place the other queens so that they do not conflict. Once there is no possible place to put a queen, it pulls the current queen off the board and tries the previous queen in its next row. The order ...

Pristomyrmex tsujii sp. n., an endemic species of the Fiji islands, is described from the worker, ergatoid queen, alate queen and male castes. The alate queen and male castes of Pristomyrmex mandibularis Mann are also described for the first time. The ergatoid queens for both species appear to be morphologically intermediate between the worker and alate queen castes. Pristomyrmex tsujii is read...

The regulation of reproductive division of labour is a key component in the evolution of social insects. Chemical signals are important mechanisms to regulate worker reproduction, either as queen-produced pheromones that coercively inhibit worker reproduction or as queen signals that honestly advertise her fecundity. A recent study suggested that a conserved class of hydrocarbons serve as queen...