Inner nest homeostasis in a changing environment with special emphasis on honey bee brood nursing and pollen supply

Abstract

-To reproduce successfully, a honey bee colony has to rear brood efficiently. This requires a fecund queen and depends on the coordinated activities of workers in brood care, in foraging, and in maintaining inner nest homeostasis. Maintaining homeostasis involves thermal regulation of the brood area and providing a steady supply of nutrients, which requires building food reserves during favorable weather so that the brood can be well fed even during times of low nutritional influx. The workforce of adult bees is appropriately divided among the required tasks, and the wax comb itself is spatially organized in a way that saves energy and supports brood nursing. The ability to achieve this homeostasis results from a set of individual behaviors and communication processes performed in parallel by thousands of bees. In this review, we discuss these proximate individual mechanisms that lead to the precise regulation of the complex system that is a honey bee society.Apis mellifera / homeostasis / nursing / pollen / self-organization

No spatial patterns for early nectar storage in honey bee colonies

“…Camazine (1991) who proposed that the pattern of comb usage typical for honeybees likely derives from a self-organizing mechanism based on the interactions among deposition and relocation processes of cell content without a plan specifying spatial relationship. Even though nectar is first deposited randomly around the comb, after successive relocations fostered by consumption, ripening or brood dynamics, honey stores accumulate above the brood and pollen as well as on the lateral combs (Camazine 1990, Schmickl & Crailsheim 2004). …”

“…Honey bee nest organization is divided in areas distinguished by their function (brood area, pollen storage and honey storage areas). Its ontogenesis is described as the result of a self-organized process based on simple decision rules (Camazine 1990, 1991, Johnson 2009, Montovan et al 2013) probably leading to reduced energy expenditure (shorter transport times and distances) and hence to task optimization (Dreller and Tarpy 2000, Schmickl and Crailsheim 2004, Hepburn et al 2014. A spatial pattern in the early carbohydrate storage could restrict the tasks necessary for honey ripening to distinct areas of the comb and thus contribute to reduced energy consumption (Greco et al 2013).…”

Order, Disorder, Death: Lessons from a Superorganism

“…In response to environmental variability (Schmickl and Crailsheim, 2004), workers in the nest fan their wings (cooling), vibrate their thorax muscles (warming), or collect water that is deposited on the combs (cooling and humidifying). Individual response thresholds to environmental fluctuations also have a strong genetic component .…”

Weight of evidence evaluation of a network of adverse outcome pathways linking activation of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor in honey bees to colony death

“…Additionally, as a compensatory survival mechanism in response to declines in pollen influx, adult bees may respond by cannibalizing brood rather than raising malnourished offspring (Schmickl and Crailsheim, 2004). Typically, larvae b 3 d old are cannibalized, and the protein obtained is used to enrich brood food, which is fed preferentially to the remaining older brood (Schmickl and Crailsheim, 2001).…”