Bee research: Publication in PNAS

What determines which tasks bees perform in their colony? Biologists from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and the universities of Cologne and Frankfurt/Main have investigated the role neural activity plays in this process. Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they explain that by manipulating a specific gene, they can selectively inhibit neural circuits in bees and thus influence their work behaviour.

Whether in human or bee societies, tasks must be reliably divided between members of the community for it to function properly. While humans consciously organise and distribute tasks, there is no central planning in a bee colony — yet the organisation of tasks among honeybees (Apis mellifera) works well. Depending on their age, worker bees perform different tasks: young bees care for the queen and the larvae, then perform construction tasks and guard the hive, and only late in life do they leave the hive to forage for food. The performance of these tasks is controlled by the interaction between around one million neurons in the bee brain, but how the nervous system controls this age-dependent organisation was previously unknown.

Initial clues as to how this organisation is controlled were provided by the HHU research group led by Professor Dr. Martin Beye from the Institute of Evolutionary Genetics during studies of the so-called doublesex gene. They showed that older worker bees in which the gene had been inactivated resumed caring for the queen — a task they would normally only perform at a younger age.

As the doublesex gene is only active in specific neural circuits, this provided Beye’s team, including researchers from the universities of Cologne and Frankfurt/Main, with an opportunity to investigate the behavioural control mechanisms in bees. By specifically silencing the doublesex neurons — a neuron-silencing protein was co-expressed from the gene and selectively activated by feeding a specific substance — the researchers were able to inhibit the activity of the corresponding neural circuits on a targeted basis.

“The older worker bees then resumed caring for the queen, which only younger bees would do otherwise. When the circuits were not inhibited, the bees exhibited their normal, age-dependent behaviour. In this way, we were able to control which tasks the worker bees performed,” said Dr. Jana Seiler, lead author of the PNAS study.

The findings show that a neural mechanism forms the basis for the organisation of tasks in the bee colony: inhibiting specific brain areas activates other neural circuits and the performance of other tasks, providing initial evidence that the exchange of information between neural circuits plays an important role in determining the tasks performed by bees.

“The ability to control the social behaviour of bees offers us new opportunities to explore the fundamentals of innate behavioural diversity and social cooperation. The solution to the secret of how bees and other animals cooperate so well without a blueprint for work is likely hidden in the brain’s neural circuits,” said Professor Beye.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2604986123
Article Title: Inhibitory modulation of age-dependent behavior through dsx-expressing cells in honeybees
Publication Date: July 13, 2026

Source: EurekAlert