Seasonal and daily variation of honeybee dancing temperature under constant feeding conditions

Germ, Monika; Stabentheiner, Anton; Kastberger, Gerald

doi:10.1051/apido:19970606

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Physiologically, a bee's thoracic temperature depends on her metabolic rate (Moffatt, 2001), which increases with increasing sugar concentration and reward rate at a food source (Moffatt and Núñez, 1997), and also with her motivational state (Balderrama et al, 1992;Moffatt, 2000;Sadler and Nieh, 2011). Although honey bees are capable of detecting temperature differences as small as 0.25°C (Heran, 1952), it is unlikely that dance followers use thoracic temperature as a source of information on the excitement of the dancers (Germ et al, 1997). Even so, hive bees have been shown to adjust their activity level (measured as thoracic temperature) according to that of the foragers (Farina and Wainselboim, 2001), which indicates that bees are indeed capable of perceiving the motivation level of others.…”

Section: The Recruitersʼ Excitement -Reflecting the Motivational Statmentioning

confidence: 99%

The recruiter's excitement – features of thoracic vibrations during the honey bee's waggle dance related to food source profitability

Hrncir

Maia-Silva

Cabe

et al. 2011

Journal of Experimental Biology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SUMMARYThe honey beeʼs waggle dance constitutes a remarkable example of an efficient code allowing social exploitation of available feeding sites. In addition to indicating the position (distance, direction) of a food patch, both the occurrence and frequency of the dances depend on the profitability of the exploited resource (sugar concentration, solution flow rate). During the waggle dance, successful foragers generate pulsed thoracic vibrations that putatively serve as a source of different kinds of information for hive bees, who cannot visually decode dances in the darkness of the hive. In the present study, we asked whether these vibrations are a reliable estimator of the excitement of the dancer when food profitability changes in terms of both sugar concentration and solution flow rate. The probability of producing thoracic vibrations as well as several features related to their intensity during the waggle phase (pulse duration, velocity amplitude, duty cycle) increased with both these profitability variables. The number of vibratory pulses, however, was independent of sugar concentration and reward rate exploited. Thus, pulse number could indeed be used by dance followers as reliable information about food source distance, as suggested in previous studies. The variability of the dancerʼs thoracic vibrations in relation to changes in food profitability suggests their role as an indicator of the recruiterʼs motivational state. Hence, the vibrations could make an important contribution to forager reactivation and, consequently, to the organisation of collective foraging processes in honey bees.

show abstract

Section: The Recruitersʼ Excitement -Reflecting the Motivational Statmentioning

confidence: 99%

The recruiter's excitement – features of thoracic vibrations during the honey bee's waggle dance related to food source profitability

Hrncir

Maia-Silva

Cabe

et al. 2011

Journal of Experimental Biology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Foragers were counted each 15·min and excess foragers were captured in aspirators and released at the end of the day. Germ et al (1997) recommends that honeybee thermal studies be avoided in the early morning or later afternoon to reduce daily climactic variability. Sunrise and sunset times at our field site were approximately 06:00·h and 18:30·h, respectively, throughout our field seasons, and we typically conducted experiments between 10:00·h and 15:00·h.…”

Section: J C Nieh and D Sánchez Foraging Meliponine Thoracic Tempementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Germ et al (1997) reported finding no correlation between honeybee recruitment rates and dancing temperature and thus concluded that thermal information was unlikely to be a primary source of information about food quality. Seeley and Towne (1992) found no evidence that recruiters dancing for a better food source attracted more dance followers than those dancing for a poorer food source.…”

Section: Conspicuousness and Potential Signallingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of food quality, distance and height on thoracic temperature in the stingless beeMelipona panamica

Nieh

Sánchez

2005

Journal of Experimental Biology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Corrigendum Nieh, J. C. and Sánchez, D. Effect of food quality, distance and height on thoracic temperature in the stingless bee Melipona panamica. J. Exp. Biol. 208,[3933][3934][3935][3936][3937][3938][3939][3940][3941][3942][3943] On the title page of this paper, Daniel Sanchez was incorrectly affiliated to Division of Biological Sciences, Section of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution, University of California San Diego, MC#0116, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0116, USAThe correct affiliation should have read:El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Carretera Antiguo Aeropuerto km 2.5, 30700 Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico.We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this error. 3933Thermoregulation is widespread among large-bodied insects (Heinrich, 1993), particularly the Hymenoptera (Himmer, 1932), wasps (Coelho and Ross, 1996;Stabentheiner et al., 2004), solitary bees (Baird, 1986;Chappell, 1982;May and Casey, 1983;Nicolson and Louw, 1982;Stone, 1993a) and social bees (Bujok et al., 2002;Kleinhenz et al., 2003;Seeley et al., 2003;Stabentheiner et al., 1990;Starks and Gilley, 1999). Thermoregulation has significant ecological consequences (Corbet et al., 1993) because internal heat generation enables solitary (Stone, 1994) and social bees (Heinrich, 1993) to forage and pollinate under colder ambient conditions compared to animals that cannot actively thermoregulate.Several studies have found evidence for thoracic temperature regulation during honeybee recruitment (Esch, 1960;Stabentheiner, 2001;Stabentheiner and Hagmüller, 1991;Waddington, 1990). Honeybees can regulate their body temperature according to food quality, exhibiting higher thoracic temperatures after feeding at richer food sources (Schmaranzer and Stabentheiner, 1988;Underwood, 1991). Thoracic temperature positively correlates with the quality of the food as perceived by sweetness (Stabentheiner and Hagmüller, 1991), proximity to the nest (Esch, 1960;Stabentheiner, 1996) and nectar flow rate (Farina and Wainselboim, 2001). Moreover, thoracic temperatures are affected by the status of the hive (amount of pollen and nectar stores) and are thus tuned to colony need (Schulz et al., 1998). Mechanistically, honeybee thoracic temperature is tied to metabolic expenditure, which increases with increasing sugar concentration and nectar flow rate (Moffatt and Nunez, 1997), and perhaps with forager motivational state (Balderrama et al., 1992). Honeybee thoracic temperature is tied to the thermal stability and the ability to generate high mechanical power output in flight (Dudley, 2000;Woods et al., 2005).To date, no studies have examined whether stingless bees have similar thermal abilities. We therefore hypothesized that food profitability to the colony would significantly affect the temperatures of recruiting meliponine foragers at the feeder and inside the nest.What little is known about meliponine thermoregulation largely concerns the regulation of nest temperatures, not individual thermoregulation (Kerr and Laidlaw, 1956;Kerr et al., 1967;Michener, 1974;Roubik...

show abstract

“…During a foraging trip the challenge is especially high because not only the ambient temperature but also solar radiation may vary in a broad range within a day and during a foraging season [4] , [8] , [9] . In order to assess the energetic demand of foraging bees under variable ambient temperatures there have been measurements of metabolism in the shade, both at artificial flowers [10] – [14] , and during flight [15] – [17] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energetic Optimisation of Foraging Honeybees: Flexible Change of Strategies in Response to Environmental Challenges

Stabentheiner

Kovac

2014

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Heterothermic insects like honeybees, foraging in a variable environment, face the challenge of keeping their body temperature high to enable immediate flight and to promote fast exploitation of resources. Because of their small size they have to cope with an enormous heat loss and, therefore, high costs of thermoregulation. This calls for energetic optimisation which may be achieved by different strategies. An ‘economizing’ strategy would be to reduce energetic investment whenever possible, for example by using external heat from the sun for thermoregulation. An ‘investment-guided’ strategy, by contrast, would be to invest additional heat production or external heat gain to optimize physiological parameters like body temperature which promise increased energetic returns. Here we show how honeybees balance these strategies in response to changes of their local microclimate. In a novel approach of simultaneous measurement of respiration and body temperature foragers displayed a flexible strategy of thermoregulatory and energetic management. While foraging in shade on an artificial flower they did not save energy with increasing ambient temperature as expected but acted according to an ‘investment-guided’ strategy, keeping the energy turnover at a high level (∼56–69 mW). This increased thorax temperature and speeded up foraging as ambient temperature increased. Solar heat was invested to increase thorax temperature at low ambient temperature (‘investment-guided’ strategy) but to save energy at high temperature (‘economizing’ strategy), leading to energy savings per stay of ∼18–76% in sunshine. This flexible economic strategy minimized costs of foraging, and optimized energetic efficiency in response to broad variation of environmental conditions.

show abstract

Seasonal and daily variation of honeybee dancing temperature under constant feeding conditions

Cited by 7 publications

References 10 publications

The recruiter's excitement – features of thoracic vibrations during the honey bee's waggle dance related to food source profitability

The recruiter's excitement – features of thoracic vibrations during the honey bee's waggle dance related to food source profitability

Effect of food quality, distance and height on thoracic temperature in the stingless beeMelipona panamica

Energetic Optimisation of Foraging Honeybees: Flexible Change of Strategies in Response to Environmental Challenges

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About