Distinctive Type of Primitive Social Behavior among Bees

Comparative Social Behavior of Bees

“…These bees which are, in effect, workers, wear themselves out, their mandi bles becoming worn and their wings tattered, at a season when their ferti lized sisters are still fresh looking (133,137 ). Semisocial bees show at least incipient castes.…”

High mean relatedness among communally galling Tamalia aphids revealed by AFLP analysis

“…In a wider context, earlier work on other social insects in which multiple foundresses share nests has established a reproductivity effect, such that total group reproduction increases with group size, but at the expense of per capita productivity (Michener, 1964;Wilson, 1971). Examples of this in well-studied hymenopterous insects include halictine bees (Michener and Lange, 1958) and ants (Wilson, 1971;Vargo, 1993; but see Cole, 1984). Our analysis of genetic distance indicates that relatedness between cohabitants is variable among galls, but averages significantly higher than mean relatedness between randomly chosen pairs in the general population.…”

Charles D. Michener (1918–2015): The Compleat Melittologist1

“…Indeed, it was among these groups that Mich could find variations in levels of social organization that supported his earlier hypothesized functional stages between aggregations of bees through to the more complex, highly eusocial societies of bumble bees, stingless bees, and honey bees. From observations on halictines, Mich described what he termed 'semisocial' societies, whereby individuals cooperate and initiate divisions of labor in an otherwise simple aggregation of females, each constructing their own brood chambers (Michener & Lange, 1958e). Further work on allodapines refined the degrees of division of labor among such primitively social societies, and helped him to further clarify his thinking in regard to cooperative interactions among such social groups (e.g., Michener, 1963).…”