| RefNo | EC/1970/03 |
| Previous numbers | Cert XVIII, 151 |
| Level | Item |
| Title | Butler, Colin Gasking: certificate of election to the Royal Society |
| Description | Citation typed |
| Citation | Distinguished for his contributions to entomology, especially to knowledge about the ways insect communities are organised. His field studies of honey-bees explained much of their behaviour and helped to solve pollination problems in crops. Outstanding among his discoveries about mechanisms controlling behaviour in the hive was the recognition of queen substance; he showed how this, produced in the mandibular glands of the queen, is distributed through a colony and inhibits workers from rearing queens and swarming. His collaboration with Dr. R. K. Callow led to its identification and synthesis. He has since shown that queen bees produce another inhibiting substance, this one volatile and not made only in the mandibular glands, and has gained evidence that actions other than queen-rearing are also governed by specific substances. There is already reason to consider that his conclusions about the chemical control of social behaviour apply to other gregarious insects than bees. |
| AccessStatus | Closed |
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Fellows associated with this archive
| Code | PersonName | Dates |
| NA4300 | Butler; Colin Gasking (1913 - 2016) | 1913 - 2016 |