Recruitment-dance signals draw larger audiences when honey bee colonies have multiple patrilines

Abstract

Honey bee queens (Apis mellifera) who mate with multiple males produce colonies that are filled with numerous genetically distinct patrilines of workers. A genetically diverse colony benefits from an enhanced foraging effort, fuelled in part by an increase in the number of recruitment signals that are produced by foragers. However, the influence of patriline diversity on the attention paid to these signals by audiences of potentially receptive workers remains unexplored. To determine whether recruitment dances performed by foragers in multiple-patriline colonies attract a greater number of dance followers than dances in colonies that lack patriline diversity, we trained workers from multiple-and singlepatriline colonies to forage in a greenhouse and monitored their dance-following activity back in the hives. On average, more workers followed a dance if it was performed in a multiple-patriline colony rather than a single-patriline colony (33% increase), and for a greater number of dance circuits per follower. Furthermore, dance-following workers in multiple-patriline colonies were more likely to exit their hive after following a dance, although this did not translate to a difference in colony-level exit rates between treatment types. Recruiting nest mates to profitable food sources through dance communication is critical to a colony's foraging success and long-term fitness; polyandrous queens produce colonies that benefit not only from increased recruitment signalling, but also from the generation of larger and more attentive audiences of signal receivers. This study highlights the importance of integrating responses of both signal senders and receivers to understand more fully the success of animal-communication systems.

Social networks predict the life and death of honey bees

“…Tracking an entire colony over a long time would allow one to investigate the stability of task allocation. Prior research has shown that during each life stage, an individual spends most of its time in a specific nest region 31 , 54 , interacting with nestmates, but with whom they interact may depend on more than location alone (e.g., previous interactions, or the genetic diversity within the colony 55 , 56 ). Social interactions permit an exchange of information and can have long-term effects on an individual’s behavior 57 .…”

Social networks predict the life and death of honey bees

“…Tracking an entire colony over a long time would allow one to investigate the stability of task allocation. Prior research has shown that during each life stage, an individual spends most of its time in a specific nest region (Johnson 2010; Seeley 1982), interacting with nestmates, but with whom they interact may depend on more than location alone (Farina 2000; Girard et al 2011). Social interactions permit an exchange of information and can have long-term effects on an individual’s behavior (Cholé et al 2019).…”

Extreme polyandry improves a honey bee colony’s ability to track dynamic foraging opportunities via greater activity of inspecting bees

“…In general, if a colony is genotypically diverse, then foragers of all stripes (including those who rely on waggle dances to learn about the profitability of a food source) tend to visit a food source in greater numbers and often at faster rates (this study; Mattila and Seeley 2010), producing upon return to their colonies more chemical signals that spur forager reactivation (Gilley et al 2012;Carr-Markell et al 2013) and more waggle dances (this study; Mattila et al 2008;Seeley 2010, 2011). Moreover, the dances produced in genotypically diverse colonies are better attended by dance followers (Girard et al 2011) and result in a greater number of recruits arriving at the food source (this study). These interactions, which are powered by the interplay between the responsiveness of genetic specialists to foraging-related stimuli (Table I) and the allocation of foragers to high-quality food sources through intensified use of recruitment signals (Seeley and Visscher 1988), fuel a honey bee colony's competitive ability to discover, exploit, and mass recruit to patchy and ephemeral food sources.…”