The scent of the waggle dance.

The waggle dance of honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) foragers communicates to nest mates the location of a profitable food source. We used solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry to show that waggle-dancing bees produce and release two alkanes, tricosane and pentacosane, and two alkenes, Z-(9)-tricosene and Z-(9)-pentacosene, onto their abdomens and into the air.

Volatile compounds emitted by live European honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) queens.

We used solid-phase microextraction (SPME, 65 microm PDMS-DVB fiber) to sample the volatile compounds emitted by live honey bee queens in several reproductive states (unmated queens, recently mated queens, and established mated queens), and compared them to the volatiles emitted by workers. We detected nine compounds that were present in at least 75% of the individuals in at least one type of bee, and which were not present in the sampling environment alone. Four of these compounds were present in queens but not in workers.