Home▸Entomology & Insect Behaviour▸Pheromone Communication in Honey Bee Colonies

🧪 Pheromone Communication in Honey Bee Colonies

How honey bees run their colony almost entirely on chemical signals, from queen mandibular pheromone and brood pheromone to alarm signals and Nasonov recruitment scent.

Entomology & Insect Behaviour3DModerate60 FPS

A cutaway 3D hive where four real bee pheromones — queen mandibular, brood, alarm and Nasonov — spread as glowing scent plumes and visibly steer the movement of hundreds of worker bees.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Each pheromone diffuses at a different rate and produces a different colony response: queen and brood signals attract nearby workers, alarm pheromone triggers rapid fleeing and agitation, and Nasonov scent recruits distant foragers home through the entrance.

🎮 How to Use

Pick a signal type, then raise the emission strength and airflow/fanning rate to watch the scent plume grow and workers react faster. Adjust the worker population to see the effect at colony scale.

💡 Did You Know?

Honey bees have around 170 odorant receptor genes and detect some pheromones in the parts-per-billion range — far more sensitive than most other insects.

⚙ Under the hood

A 3D hive cutaway where you switch between queen, brood, alarm and Nasonov pheromones and watch a glowing particle scent-plume diffuse while an instanced swarm of worker bees is attracted to or repelled from the source in real time.

bee-pheromonesqueen-pheromonealarm-pheromonenasonovbrood-pheromonecolony-communication

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install