Communication between individuals is an essential element of social organization. That communication can be through any or all of the senses. Chemical communication by odour is most highly evolved in social insects, and is probably their most important route
of communication. One of the requirements of social organization is the recognition of nestmates and distinguishing them from nonnestmates. Stingless bees, like other social insects, are able to distinguish between nestmates and non-nestmates by chemical cues present on their cuticle. Each individual in a colony presents a blend of compounds on its cuticle that may also carry information regarding its sex, age, caste, group task as well as colony. In recognition procedures, one individual (evaluator) compares the chemical label of a newly presented individual (cue-bearer) with some kind of internal template. The evaluator can learn which cues to recognize by prior associations with frequently encountered individuals. The template can also come from phenotype matching, in which the evaluator uses the cues learned from other individuals. An additional option is the recognition behaviour ruled by genetic basis. In this system, the phenotypic cues are the result of genetic expression. The same genes responsible for producing the cues in the cue-bearer would be responsible for producing a recognition ability of such cue in the evaluator Similarities between label and template result in acceptance behaviour, while differences in these factors result in rejection, although acceptance and rejection errors may occasionally occur