What determines which tasks bees perform in their colony? Biologists from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and the universities in Cologne and Frankfurt/Main have investigated the role neural activity plays in this process. In the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 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 the 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. Nevertheless, the organisation of tasks among the bees ( Apis mellifera ) works well.
Depending on their age, worker bees perform different tasks: Young bees care for the queen and the larvae. Subsequently, they perform construction tasks and guard the hive. Only late in life do they leave the hive to forage for food. The performance of the different tasks is controlled by the interaction between around one million neurons in the bee brain. However, how the nervous system controls this age-dependent task organisation was previously unknown.
Initial clues as to how this organisation of tasks 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 and thus performed tasks they would normally only perform at a younger age.
As the doublesex gene is only active in specific neural circuits, this provided a research team led by Professor Beye and including researchers from the universities in 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.
Dr Jana Seiler, lead author of the PNAS study: “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.”
The researchers’ 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. The results provide initial evidence that the exchange of information between neural circuits plays an important role in determining the tasks performed by bees.
Professor Beye: “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.”
Jana Seiler, Pia Ulbricht, Vivien Sommer, Sabine Metzger, Bernd Grünewald, and Martin Beye; Inhibitory modulation of age-dependent behavior through dsx-expressing cells in honeybees; PNAS 123 (29) e2604986123, 13. Juli 2026
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Inhibitory modulation of age-dependent behavior through dsx-expressing cells in honeybees
13-Jul-2026