TY - JOUR
T1 - Bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) store both food and information in honeypots
AU - Dornhaus, Anna
AU - Chittka, Lars
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Assal Amouie for help with data collection and the ‘‘Ant Lab’’ in Bristol and A. Weidenmüller for advice and comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the German Science Foundation (DFG: grant SFB 554, project B5 to L.C. and Emmy Noether Fellowship to A.D.) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD: postdoctoral stipend to A.D.).
PY - 2005/5
Y1 - 2005/5
N2 - Social insect foragers often transmit information about food sources to nest mates. In bumble bees (Bombus terrestris), for example, successful foragers use excited motor displays and a pheromone as communication signals. In addition, bees could make use of an indirect pathway of information flow, via the honey stores. We show here that, indeed, bees in the nest continuously monitor honeypots and sample their contents, thus obtaining information on supply and demand of nectar. When there is an influx of nectar into the nest, the colony deploys more workers for foraging. The number of new foragers depends on sugar concentration. Foragers returning with high-quality sugar solution display more "excited runs" on the nest structure. The recruits' response, however, does not depend on modulated behavior by foragers: more workers start to forage with high quality of incoming nectar, even when this nectar is brought by a pipette. Moreover, we show that the readiness of bees to respond to recruitment signals or incoming nectar also depends on colony demand. When colony nectar stores are full, the response of bees to equal amounts of nectar influx is smaller than when stores are empty. When colony nectar stores are depleted, foragers spend more time running excitedly and less time probing pots in the nest and run with higher average speed, possibly to disperse the alerting pheromone more efficiently. However, more bees respond to nectar influx to empty stores, whether or not this is accompanied by forager signals. Thus, honeypots serve to store information as well as food.
AB - Social insect foragers often transmit information about food sources to nest mates. In bumble bees (Bombus terrestris), for example, successful foragers use excited motor displays and a pheromone as communication signals. In addition, bees could make use of an indirect pathway of information flow, via the honey stores. We show here that, indeed, bees in the nest continuously monitor honeypots and sample their contents, thus obtaining information on supply and demand of nectar. When there is an influx of nectar into the nest, the colony deploys more workers for foraging. The number of new foragers depends on sugar concentration. Foragers returning with high-quality sugar solution display more "excited runs" on the nest structure. The recruits' response, however, does not depend on modulated behavior by foragers: more workers start to forage with high quality of incoming nectar, even when this nectar is brought by a pipette. Moreover, we show that the readiness of bees to respond to recruitment signals or incoming nectar also depends on colony demand. When colony nectar stores are full, the response of bees to equal amounts of nectar influx is smaller than when stores are empty. When colony nectar stores are depleted, foragers spend more time running excitedly and less time probing pots in the nest and run with higher average speed, possibly to disperse the alerting pheromone more efficiently. However, more bees respond to nectar influx to empty stores, whether or not this is accompanied by forager signals. Thus, honeypots serve to store information as well as food.
KW - Collective behavior
KW - Communication
KW - Foraging
KW - Information flow
KW - Recruitment
KW - Social insect
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U2 - 10.1093/beheco/ari040
DO - 10.1093/beheco/ari040
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:19344374098
SN - 1045-2249
VL - 16
SP - 661
EP - 666
JO - Behavioral Ecology
JF - Behavioral Ecology
IS - 3
ER -