The Sound and the Fury—Bees Hiss when Expecting Danger

Wehmann, Henja-Niniane; Gustav, David; Kirkerud, Nicholas H.; Galizia, C. Giovanni

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0118708

Cited by 15 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 55 publications

(54 reference statements)

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“…Our results show that A. cerana japonica clearly hiss during the daytime, and that the start and end of the hiss is adjusted to the timing of sunrise and sunset. This result was also interesting, since the hissing behavior of honey bees is typically regarded as an aposematic signal acting as a conditional reflex behavior against disturbance, as reported in many other bees (Wehmann et al 2015). Considering our results, it is likely that there are other potential functions or, at least, unknown characteristics, of the hissing behavior of A. cerana japonica .…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

“…Regarding the function of hissing, it is thought to serve as an aposematic signal in response to disturbances, such as physical disturbance of a colony or the approach of predator, such as hornets (Fuchs and Koeniger 1974;Sarma et al 2002;Hrncir et al 2005;Fuchs and Tautz 2011;Wehmann et al 2015); a correlation formed on the basis of circumstantial and observational evidence over time. However, findings from the previous study (Kawakita et al 2018) showed that A. cerana japonica could hiss even without an obvious disturbance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sound recordings of Apis cerana japonica colonies over 24 h reveal unique daily hissing patterns

et al. 2019

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The simultaneous wing movement by multiple worker bees in a colony produces a hissing sound, which is a novel acoustic and vibrational signal of the honey bees. Hissing of honey bees is thought to be a response to direct, threatening stimuli. However, we discovered Japanese honey bees (Apis cerana japonica ) can hiss even without obvious disturbances in previous study. In this study, to understand the temporal characteristics of honey bee hissing, we conducted 24-h sound recordings over 7 months in 2015 and investigated when A. cerana japonica hissed every day. Additionally, we also investigated the relationship of hissing onset and offset times with sunrise and sunset times, and environmental factors. We found that honey bees hiss daily during daytime and most frequently at dawn, with hissing onset/offset occurring mostly within 30 min of sunrise/sunset time. Hissing onset and offset were significantly related to sunrise and sunset times, respectively, and also to solar radiation intensity. The findings reveal that A. cerana japonica hissing has unique temporal patterns, and also shed a new light on vibrational collective behavior in honey bees. acoustic/vibrational behavior / Apis cerana japonica / hissing / honey bees / shimmering

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sound recordings of Apis cerana japonica colonies over 24 h reveal unique daily hissing patterns

et al. 2019

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“…Hissing seems to be an innate response to noxious stimuli, as this behaviour is also produced in response to electric shocks (Wehmann et al, 2015). Whether these sounds are used as an alarm signal to the colony, as a threat to hornets (which are known to use high-frequency sounds for communication) or are just distress sounds remains to be determined.…”

Section: Defence Against Other Insectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The defensive response of the honeybee Apis mellifera

Nouvian

Reinhard

Giurfa

2016

Journal of Experimental Biology

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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.

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“…This system was an adapted version of the one used for aversive olfactory conditioning (Kirkerud et al, 2013; Schott et al, 2015; Wehmann et al, 2015). In the APIS assay bees are able to move freely in a conditioning chamber, which is equipped with LEDs to provide visual stimuli of different wavelengths and intensities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Different Roles for Honey Bee Mushroom Bodies and Central Complex in Visual Learning of Colored Lights in an Aversive Conditioning Assay

Plath

Entler

Kirkerud

et al. 2017

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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The honey bee is an excellent visual learner, but we know little about how and why it performs so well, or how visual information is learned by the bee brain. Here we examined the different roles of two key integrative regions of the brain in visual learning: the mushroom bodies and the central complex. We tested bees' learning performance in a new assay of color learning that used electric shock as punishment. In this assay a light field was paired with electric shock. The other half of the conditioning chamber was illuminated with light of a different wavelength and not paired with shocks. The unrestrained bee could run away from the light stimulus and thereby associate one wavelength with punishment, and the other with safety. We compared learning performance of bees in which either the central complex or mushroom bodies had been transiently inactivated by microinjection of the reversible anesthetic procaine. Control bees learned to escape the shock-paired light field and to spend more time in the safe light field after a few trials. When ventral lobe neurons of the mushroom bodies were silenced, bees were no longer able to associate one light field with shock. By contrast, silencing of one collar region of the mushroom body calyx did not alter behavior in the learning assay in comparison to control treatment. Bees with silenced central complex neurons did not leave the shock-paired light field in the middle trials of training, even after a few seconds of being shocked. We discussed how mushroom bodies and the central complex both contribute to aversive visual learning with an operant component.

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The Sound and the Fury—Bees Hiss when Expecting Danger

Cited by 15 publications

References 55 publications

Sound recordings of Apis cerana japonica colonies over 24 h reveal unique daily hissing patterns

Sound recordings of Apis cerana japonica colonies over 24 h reveal unique daily hissing patterns

The defensive response of the honeybee Apis mellifera

Different Roles for Honey Bee Mushroom Bodies and Central Complex in Visual Learning of Colored Lights in an Aversive Conditioning Assay

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