Benefits of recruitment in honey bees: effects of ecology and colony size in an individual-based model

Abstract

Why do some social insects have sophisticated recruitment systems, while other species do not communicate about food source locations at all? To answer this question, it is necessary to identify the social or ecological factors that make recruitment adaptive and thus likely to evolve. We developed an individual-based model of honey bee foraging to quantify the benefits of recruitment under different spatial distributions of nondepleting resource patches and with different colony sizes. Benefits of recruitment were strongly dependent on resource patch quality, density, and variability. Communication was especially beneficial if patches were poor, few, and variable. A sensitivity analysis of the model showed that under conditions of high resource density recruitment could even become detrimental, especially if foraging duration was short, tendency to scout was high, or recruits needed a long time to find communicated locations. Colony size, a factor often suspected to influence recruitment evolution, had no significant effect. These results may explain the recent experimental findings that in honey bees, benefits of waggle dance recruitment seem to vary seasonally and with habitat. They may also explain why some, but not other, species of social bees have evolved a strategy to communicate food locations to nest mates.

Conservation of Asian honey bees

“…There is increasing concern that anthropogenic disruption of plantpollinator mutualisms will lead to a wave of plant extinctions (Bond, 1994;Buchmann and Nabhan, 1996;Biesmeijer et al, 2006). Because of their dance language and large foraging range, honey bee colonies can rapidly identify and exploit ephemeral floral resources over a wide area (Koeniger et al, 1982;Dyer, 1985;Punchihewa et al, 1985;Dyer and Seeley, 1991;Dornhaus and Chittka, 1999;Sen Sarma et al, 2004;Dornhaus et al, 2006;Beekman and Lew, 2007;Beekman et al, 2008), often resulting in inter-specific competition for food (Koeniger and Vorwohl, 1979;Oldroyd et al, 1992;Rinderer et al, 1996;Köppler et al, 2007). Perhaps for this reason, the non-Apis bee fauna of Asia is depauperate relative to tropical forests in Australia Conservation of Asian honey bees 299 and America (Michener, 1979;Corlett, 2004;Batley and Hogendoorn, 2009).…”

How far can Melipona mandacaia (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponini) foragers fly in a caatinga area of ne brazil?

“…The distances traveled by foragers depend on several factors, as density and seasonality of food source, as well as the bee species (Dornhaus et al, 2006), physiology and body size (Araujo et al, 2004;Greenleaf et al, 2007). Moreover, other aspects, isolated or together, may also affect their flight, as internal colony conditions and climatic factors (Hilário et al, 2000).…”

Social Information Use in Foraging Insects

“…If food is easy to find, the value of social information will be limited-particularly if gathering it incurs a time cost in itself. For example, although it might intuitively seem that a honey bee should benefit by learning from others about where they have found food, in practice the time cost of waiting for dance information might often outweigh the benefits (Dechaume-Moncharmont et al 2005;Dornhaus et al 2006), especially if all foragers choose to wait for social information rather than individually discovering new food patches (Giraldeau and Beauchamp 1999;Dechaume-Moncharmont et al 2005).…”