Both, the frequency of queen - queen aggression and of grooming and feeding behavior of queens by workers predicted which queen later started to lay eggs.
The behavior of the queen is largely limited to fighting other queens and laying eggs, while her morphology is missing many traits present in the workers [ 22].
Furthermore, the individual average dominance index (ADI, [ 30]) of each queen calculated from queen - queen aggression predicted the future reproductive status of a queen (likelihood - ratio - Chi2 = 4.50, d. f. = 1, P = 0.034, 29 queens).
Another possibility to explain the peaceful behavior of ablated queens is that they obtained information about the fighting ability of their opponents in an indirect and remote manner.
Because it is not possible to control the natural mating behavior of queens, we used instrumental insemination and compared queens inseminated with semen from either a single drone (single-drone inseminated, or SDI) or 10 drones (multi-drone inseminated, or MDI).
Honest signaling of fighting ability by queens can be ruled out based on the peaceful behavior of queens in the ablated groups.
The behavior of these "pseudo-queens," as Reinberg calls them, changes dramatically; their life spans increase.
We investigated the behavior of queens and workers in functionally monogynous colonies of L. acervorum from two mountain ranges in central Spain.
Crowded hive environments can facilitate rapid pathogen transmission which may be counteracted by individuals' immune systems, social immune defenses and the genetic diversity within a colony, fostered by the polyandrous behavior of queens [ 6].
In addition, parasitism has not caused the mating behavior of V. squamosa queens to deviate from the high levels of multiple mating that typify Vespula wasps.
