world, ranging in size from 5,000 to over 100,000 workers. Some colonies can reach 180,000 individuals, which is one order of magnitude larger than the size of honey bee colonies. The nests are perennial. Behavior Polarized odor-trail communication Like all other stingless bees, Trigona spinipes is highly social. When foraging, the workers utilize polarized odor-trail communication to relay the locations of food sources to each other. Unlike classic pheromone trails which extend from the food source to the nest, these polarized pheromone signals are short and do not reach the nest. They likely evolved to be short so as to not lead eavesdropping predators back to their nest. What makes these trails polarized is that they are strongest at the food source and taper off moving away from it. This allows other bees following the signal to arrive at the food in large numbers without wasting time looking for food along the trail. Octyl octanoate is the most significant component of the trail pheromone. It is emitted from the cephalic labial glands of Trigona spinipes and makes up approximately 74% of the secretion. Studies found synthetically produced octyl octanoate to be equally attractive to natural extract derived from the labial glands of foragers. Male mating behavior Because Trigona spinipes queens only mate once in their lifetimes, there is tremendous competition between males to copulate with virgin queens. Usually 30–50 but sometimes even hundreds of males can be counted near virgin queen colonies in lek-like groups. The males come from great distances and from a variety of nests. There is a very low probability that a male will ever mate. They stay inside the colony until the age of 2–3 weeks and then leave the nest and live the life of a solitary male bee, which might be 4–6 weeks. While living alone, they will forage with conspecific workers and may follow these workers back to their nests to learn the locations of conspecific nests. Communication While Trigona spinipes workers follow their nest-mates pheromone trails to food resources, they have been shown to follow scent marks left by another stingless bee Melipona rufiventris. They do this when they are foraging for new sources of food. Afterwards, Trigona spinipes will attack foraging Melipona rufiventris bees and take over their food. Some hypothesize that honey bee dance evolved to prevent eavesdropping espionage of this sort. The pheromone signal laid down by Trigona spinipes