Eclectic chemisociality of the honeybee : A wealth of behaviors, pheromones, and exocrine glands.

A dazzling variety of honeybee behaviors are triggered by pheromones produced by disparate exocrine glands. A multiplicity of chemical releasers of social behavior has been demonstrated to regulate a diversity of societal interactions, and many of these compounds are synthesized with great caste specificity. Recent investigations have resulted in the identification of a host of new compounds that are products of either worker or queen honeybees. This report fractionates these newly identified exocrine products according to their glandular proveniences and focuses on both the structural and behavioral eclecticism that characterizes these chemical signaling agents.