Since 1993 Marla Spivak, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota, has been breeding a strain of honeybee that can smell the rotting odor of American foulbrood, a bacterial infection, as well as the yeasty whiff of chalkbrood, a fungal disease; they can also detect parasitic varroa mite infestations in young bee pupae. (discovermagazine.com)
So entomologist Gene Robinson and colleagues at the University of Illinois, Urbana - Champaign, suspected that the clock gene period might kick in to help as young bees matured. (sciencemag.org)
Amdam removed young bees from their hives, which tricked the older bees into returning to their caretaker posts. (scientificamerican.com)