Inside a hive, food handoffs depend on careful timing between hungry males and the workers that feed them.<\/p>\n The research was led by Professor Martin Beye, who studies how genes guide brain development and social choices in insects, with honeybees as a main focus.<\/p>\n Why drone bees need help<\/p>\n Male bees of the species Apis mellifera, known as drones, eat little pollen. Instead, worker bees digest it and feed the drones protein-rich secretions from glands in their heads.<\/p>\n This dependence means males must seek out workers and request food, rather than collecting their own protein outside the hive<\/a>.<\/p>\n If the request fails, drones can starve even while the colony stores plenty of pollen and nectar nearby.<\/p>\n The begging sequence<\/p>\n Drones begin by tapping workers with their antennae, then continue begging until a worker opens her mouth to share food. <\/p>\n This exchange, called trophallaxis, involves mouth-to-mouth transfer of liquid food and also spreads chemical signals within the colony.<\/p>\n \u201cIn our research, we ask ourselves what is required to orchestrate this interaction,\u201d said Professor Beye.<\/p>\n How the fruitless gene works<\/p>\n One reason the fruitless gene matters is that it acts as a transcription factor, a protein that controls when other genes turn on.<\/p>\n During male development, this kind of regulator can alter which neurons connect, by changing the proteins cells build at key stages.<\/p>\n The team found the fruitless gene active mainly in male nervous-system cells, hinting that a sex-specific program shapes the begging sequence.<\/p>\n Marking active brain cells<\/p>\n At HHU, the researchers added a gene that makes a green fluorescent marker wherever the fruitless gene turns on.<\/p>\n The marker lit up clusters of neurons involved in sensing and integrating information, including touch and taste pathways that guide close contact.<\/p>\n Because the method labels living tissue without stopping the fruitless gene, it gave a map for later tests that disabled it.<\/p>\n Where those signals meet<\/p>\n Several fruitless-gene-marked neurons sit in the mushroom bodies<\/a>, bee brain regions that combine sensory inputs for learning.<\/p>\n Other marked cells appear in odor and vision centers, suggesting the gene touches many routes that can guide a social approach.<\/p>\n The pattern fits an idea that begging depends on evaluating several senses at once, not on a single cue.<\/p>\n Removing the gene<\/p>\n The researchers created a knockout mutant<\/a>, an animal engineered to lack a working gene, for the fruitless gene in drones.<\/p>\n Without the fruitless protein during development, the same bee still forms a brain, but some circuits no longer drive the right choices.<\/p>\n This design let the researchers test whether the fruitless gene controls the start and stopping points of begging, rather than muscle movements.<\/p>\n Tracking bees in colonies<\/p>\n To follow each male in a crowded hive, the researchers attached tiny two-dimensional barcodes and recorded the colony with cameras.<\/p>\n Software then traced who approached whom and how long contact lasted, turning messy movement into clean behavioral counts.<\/p>\n Because the setup ran inside experimental colonies, it captured begging in the context workers and drones normally experience.<\/p>\n Changes in begging behavior<\/p>\n When the fruitless gene was missing, mutant drones approached nestmates less often, which cut chances to start the feeding sequence.<\/p>\n Begging and mouth-to-mouth transfers fell by about twofold, so many males received less worker-made food during the day.<\/p>\n The pattern points to a decision problem, where males fail to commit to social contact long enough for a worker to respond.<\/p>\n What stayed surprisingly normal<\/p>\n Many basic actions stayed normal, including walking, resting, and self-cleaning, even when the fruitless gene could not function.<\/p>\n Mutant drones still performed the same body movements during begging, but they began those bouts less often and ended sooner.<\/p>\n That narrow change argues against a simple weakness or injury, and instead ties the fruitless gene to motivation and persistence.<\/p>\n Detection versus decision<\/p>\n The bees also kept their cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs<\/a>), waxy skin chemicals that carry identity cues, so workers had no new smell to avoid.<\/p>\n Brain scans showed the first smell-processing region looked intact, and neural responses to key odors stayed strong.<\/p>\n These checks suggest the fruitless gene affects how sensory input guides social decisions, not whether the senses detect those cues.<\/p>\n Responses to queen scent<\/p>\n Outside the hive, drones chase queens using pheromones<\/a>, chemical signals that influence behavior in bees. The fruitless gene plays a part.<\/p>\n In lab tests, normal males reacted strongly to the queen\u2019s scent, while mutants showed much less movement.<\/p>\n Responses to light, unpleasant smells, and basic touch were unchanged, showing that the gene\u2019s effects were limited.<\/p>\n Over evolutionary time, a gene program can take on new jobs, and the fruitless gene now guides within-hive cooperation.<\/p>\n Male-only activity in the fruitless gene helped create a neural control system that starts and sustains begging when cues match.<\/p>\n Because evolution may tweak many downstream genes, pinpointing the fruitless gene is only the first step toward a full map.<\/p>\n Taken together, the work links a defined set of brain cells to a social exchange that keeps drones alive.<\/p>\n Future studies can trace fruitless-gene targets in those neurons, while testing how nutrition and colony stress tune the behavior.<\/p>\n The study is published in the journal Nature Communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A gene called fruitless controls about 1,800 brain cells that allow male honeybees to beg worker bees for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2594,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-205707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-animals","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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