Known as supersedure, the process occurs when the tens of thousands of worker bees in a colony sense their queen is no longer laying enough eggs and coordinate to replace her with a new, healthier queen. While this survival strategy helps wild colonies adapt, it can spell trouble for managed hives, leading to gaps in egg-laying, weaker colony populations and ultimately less pollinating and honey production.

Now, researchers at the University of British Columbia have made an important discovery that illuminates why these violent revolts occur and how they're coordinated with such remarkable synchronicity.

Published recently in PNAS, the research team found that common viral infections shrink a queen's ovaries, reducing both her egg-laying capacity and her production of methyl oleate, a pheromone that normally keeps workers loyal. When methyl oleate levels drop, workers will "smell" the queen's weakness and begin preparing her successor.

"A healthy queen can lay as many as 850 to 3,200 eggs per day, which is more than her whole body weight," said senior author Dr. Leonard Foster, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at UBC's Faculty of Medicine and Michael Smith Laboratories. "But in our experiments, virus-infected queens laid fewer eggs and produced less methyl oleate. That pheromone reduction seems to be the signal to workers that a queen is no longer fit to continue."