Science / Medicine : Genes Tied to Bee Roles

Genes play a major role in whether a honey bee serves its hive as a groomer, guard or even an undertaker, two studies suggest.

The findings have “substantial implications for our understanding of the evolution of division of labor in colonies of social insects,” Michael Breed of the University of Colorado said in an editorial accompanying the papers, which appear in the British journal Nature.

Gene Robinson and Robert Page Jr. of Ohio State University studied worker bees that specialized in standing guard at the hive entrance or in removing corpses. They found significant genetic differences between the groups and between each specialist group and other worker bees.

The other study found evidence for genetic influence on the tendency of worker bees to groom nest mates, wrote Peter Frumhoff and Jayne Baker, who did the work at the UC Davis.