IF YOU think going through passport control at the airport is inconvenient, spare a thought for the poor honeybee. Foragers returning home after a nectar-gathering trip have to pass a 鈥渟mell test鈥� before they are let back in. Guard bees smell the foragers to check that they belong to the hive. And now Anton Stabentheiner and colleagues at the University of Graz in Austria have found that foragers raise their body temperatures by up to 12 掳C during this security check.
The team discovered the rapid temperature hike when they used an infrared camera to film 303 bees returning to the hive (Journal of Experimental Biology, vol 205, p 2637). Stabentheiner thinks that warming makes pheromones on the bees鈥� cuticle more volatile, accentuating their natural scent.