Prison or self-protection? The role of cerumen chamber construction for young queens in the stingless bee Plebeia flavocincta

Abstract

A poorly understood aspect in several stingless bee species is the construction of cerumen chambers in which virgin queens are found. The present study aimed to investigate the role of these chambers in Plebeia flavocincta and their association with dominance behaviors displayed by newly emerged virgin queens. Eleven queens emerging in protocolonies (nine normal-sized and two miniature queens) were observed from emergence until 5 days of age, at which point they were no longer attacked by workers. The construction of chambers was observed in ten (90.9%) of these monitored queens, who led their construction and used them as shelters, but exited freely to recruit workers through various dominance behaviors. However, only nine of these females could be included in the final dataset. Changing in behaviors frequency and composition across observation days was analyzed by generalized linear mixed models and Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) for ten behaviors, across nine gynes and 5 days of monitoring. The model results showed that dominance behavior frequency decreased significantly on days 4 and 5, and the NMDS did not present a consistent pattern in the set of behaviors. This reflects that dominance-related actions declined over time (or as queens aged); however, the composition of these behaviors for each gyne is variable. We concluded in our experimental context that the events associated with chamber construction in P. flavocincta likely functioned as an innate and immediate self-protective strategy of virgin queens, probably acting as a potential mechanism for survival and hierarchical consolidation. Our discussion reinforces that virgin queens in certain groups of meliponine bees, particularly those that establish early dominance, may play an important role in selection of new reproductive females, suggesting that this process is not exclusively mediated by workers.