Cover image
Cover: A tethered honeybee male (drone, Apis mellifera) walks on an air-supported ball in front of two airflows providing different odorant stimulations. Using this walking simulator to study drones’ olfactory choice behavior under laboratory conditions, Brandstaetter et al. (pp. 1278−1285) show that drones are attracted not only to the major component dominating virgin queens’ sex pheromone, but also to the odor bouquet of other drones. This result may indicate the use of olfactory cues in the formation of drone congregation areas, discrete locations 10–40 m up in the air, in which several thousand drones gather for reproduction. Photo credit: F. Bastin.
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