Behavioral performance in adult honey bees is influenced by the temperature experienced during their pupal development

Abstract

To investigate the possible consequences of brood-temperature regulation in honey bee colonies on the quality of behavioral performance of adults, we placed honey bee pupae in incubators and allowed them to develop at temperatures held constant at 32°C, 34.5°C, and 36°C. This temperature range occurs naturally within hives. On emergence, the young adult bees were marked and introduced into foster colonies housed in normal and observation hives and allowed to live out their lives. No obvious difference in within-hive behavior was noted between the temperature-treated bees and the foster-colony bees. However, when the temperature-treated bees became foragers and were trained to visit a feeder 200 m from the hive, they exhibited clear differences in dance performance that could be correlated with the temperatures at which they had been raised: bees raised at 32°C completed only Ϸ20% of the dance circuits when compared with bees of the higher-temperature group. Also, the variance in the duration of the waggle phase is larger in 32°C-raised bees compared with 36°C-raised bees. All other parameters compared across all groups were not significantly different. One-trial learning and memory consolidation in the bees raised at different temperatures was investigated 1 and 10 min after conditioning the proboscis-extension reflex. Bees raised at 36°C performed as expected for bees typically classified as ''good learners,'' whereas bees raised at 32°C and 34.5°C performed significantly less well. We propose that the temperature at which pupae are raised will influence their behavioral performance as adults and may determine the tasks they carry out best inside and outside the hive. C ollective control of brood temperature is an essential aspect of the behavior of honey bees, and air temperatures measured close to the brood combs are, although never constant, always within a range of 33-36°C (1-7). High temperatures outside the hive are compensated by bringing water into the hive and evaporating this by wing fanning (8). Low temperatures inside the hive are compensated by the production of heat through thoracic muscle activity in individual bees, which then is transferred to the brood (9-11). Extended deviations from an optimal temperature window during development are known to result in morphological deficits (2,(12)(13)(14), so, by stabilizing the brood temperature, bees are able to control the influence of this environmental variable on the development of their offspring.Temperature regimes during the development of individual pupae, however, are dynamic and more complex than is implied by a single average air temperature (15). Measurements of the temperature within individual pupal cells, for example, revealed values that ranged from 32.6°C for the coldest pupa to 35.9°C for the warmest pupa. Taken over a 3-h period, the mean temperatures for these pupae were 33.7°C for the coldest and 35.0°C for the warmest pupa, but no pupae raised in the combs experienced a completely constant temperature (M. Kleinhenz, B. Bujok, S. Fu...

Synaptic organization in the adult honey bee brain is influenced by brood-temperature control during pupal development

“…MG, therefore, represent a potential neuronal substrate for temperature-mediated effects on adult behavior (10). In the lip, numbers of MG were highest between 33.5 and 35°C, which overlaps with the narrow temperature range maintained in central brood cells (Fig.…”

“…After emergence, immunof luorescence staining was performed with brains of worker bees 1 (total of 90) and 7 (total of 18) days old. The latter were taken from the group of bees that had been tested in a conditioning paradigm in a previous study (10). Brains were dissected in cold physiological saline (130 mM NaCl͞5 mM KCl͞4 mM MgCl 2 ͞5 mM CaCl 2 ͞15 mM Hepes͞25 mM glucose͞160 mM sucrose, pH 7.2), immediately immersed in cold 4% paraformaldehyde in 0.1 M PBS, pH 7.2, fixed overnight at 4°C, and then washed three times in PBS.…”

“…Thermoregulation during winter is achieved also by endothermic heat production, but with lower absolute temperatures and less precision compared with brood rearing in summer (8,9). A recent study demonstrated that the temperature experienced during pupal development influences the behavioral performance of adult bees (10). Worker bees that had been raised at lower temperatures (within the range of naturally occurring temperatures) performed less well in dance communication and olfactory learning than bees raised at higher temperatures.…”

Thermal conditions during juvenile development affect adult dispersal in a spider

“…In general, direct behavioral responses to thermal conditions experienced at an earlier life stage are poorly documented. However, in the Hymenoptera, adult oviposition and foraging behavior depend on juvenile thermal conditions (26,27), but not on adult body condition.…”

Standard methods for behavioural studies ofApis mellifera

“…These locations differ from each other with respect to the stimuli they present to the bees (i.e. temperature: Fahrenholz et al, 1989;Crailsheim et al, 1999a;Tautz et al, 2003;Stabentheiner et al, 2003;Groh et al, 2004;Kernbach et al, 2009;Becher et al, 2010;Schmickl and Hamann, 2011). Several important regions of a honey bee colony ( Fig.…”