The defensive response of the honeybee Apis mellifera

Abstract

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) are insects living in colonies with a complex social organization. Their nest contains food stores in the form of honey and pollen, as well as the brood, the queen and the bees themselves. These resources have to be defended against a wide range of predators and parasites, a task that is performed by specialized workers, called guard bees. Guards tune their response to both the nature of the threat and the environmental conditions, in order to achieve an efficient trade-off between defence and loss of foraging workforce. By releasing alarm pheromones, they are able to recruit other bees to help them handle large predators. These chemicals trigger both rapid and longer-term changes in the behaviour of nearby bees, thus priming them for defence. Here, we review our current understanding on how this sequence of events is performed and regulated depending on a variety of factors that are both extrinsic and intrinsic to the colony. We present our current knowledge on the neural bases of honeybee aggression and highlight research avenues for future studies in this area. We present a brief overview of the techniques used to study honeybee aggression, and discuss how these could be used to gain further insights into the mechanisms of this behaviour.

Biogenic amines and activity levels alter the neural energetic response to aggressive social cues in the honey bee Apis mellifera

“…Here we assess the relationship between aggression, mitochondrial bioenergetics, and biogenic amine signaling in the honey bee, Apis mellifera . Honey bee aggression is socially modulated rapidly during an antipredator event, but it also shows stable individual variation as a function of age and developmental environment (Nouvian, Reinhard, & Giurfa, ; Rittschof, Coombs, Frazier, Grozinger, & Robinson, ; Rittschof & Hughes, ). Honey bee aggression is strongly associated with variation in neural energetics described using transcriptomic, metabolomics, and mitochondrial bioenergetics data (Chandrasekaran et al, ; Li‐Byarlay et al, ; Rittschof et al, , ; Rittschof, Coombs, et al, ; Rittschof & Hughes, ; Rittschof & Schirmeier, ).…”

The transcriptomic signature of low aggression honey bees resembles a response to infection

“…Honey bee aggression is exhibited by worker bees in the context of nest defense. Previous studies quantify aggression as a relative measure at the colony (using field-based assays) or individual bee (using laboratory-based assays) level (Nouvian et al 2016). Because nest defense is a collective behavior, aggression is highly socially and environmentally responsive in the honey bee (Guzman-Novoa & Page 1994;Hunt et al 2003;Rittschof & Robinson 2013;Li-Byarlay et al 2014;Rittschof et al 2014;Chandrasekaran et al 2015;Rittschof et al 2015a;Shpigler et al 2017b).…”

The Evolution of Mass Cell Suicide in Bacterial Warfare

“…[6,55]. Middle: Honey bee ( Apis mellifera ) workers sting in defense of their colony, which often results in the worker’s death as the sting gets pulled out of her body [7]. Right: A long-standing myth incorrectly holds that lemmings commit mass suicide.…”