Role of Guard Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in Nestmate Discrimination and Replacement of Removed Guards

Breed, Michael D.; Smith, Teresa; Torres, Armando

doi:10.1093/aesa/85.5.633

Cited by 51 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…The number of bees allocated to guarding is fairly small -only 10 to 15% of workers become guards (Moore et al, 1987) -and usually they guard for no more than a day. However, this number increases after a disturbance or when more intruders are trying to enter the hive (Breed et al, 1992;Butler and Free, 1952). Colonies displaying a stronger overall defensive response tend to allocate more workers to guarding, and these guards remain active for a longer period (Arechavaleta-Velasco and Breed et al, 1989;Guzman-Novoa et al, 2004).…”

Section: Division Of Labour During Colony Defencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is some evidence that another population of bees -referred to as 'soldier bees' -is responsible for harassing any intruders, but this remains a subject of debate. The degree of wear of soldiers' wings is significantly lower than that of foragers of the same age, so it has been suggested that these bees spend more time inside the hive, where they can be quickly mobilized to the entrance (Breed et al, 1990(Breed et al, , 1992. In addition, the propensity to sting is regulated by both genetic factors and age, with older bees being more likely to sting (Giray et al, 2000).…”

Section: Division Of Labour During Colony Defencementioning

confidence: 99%

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The defensive response of the honeybee Apis mellifera

Nouvian

Reinhard

Giurfa

2016

Journal of Experimental Biology

105

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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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Section: Division Of Labour During Colony Defencementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Division Of Labour During Colony Defencementioning

confidence: 99%

The defensive response of the honeybee Apis mellifera

Nouvian

Reinhard

Giurfa

2016

Journal of Experimental Biology

105

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“…Therefore it is plausible to propose that the mobilisation of soldier bees (cf. Breed et al 1992) causes the increase of the net outflyer rate after the onset of m-or mp-stimulation. A strong support for this surmise is given by the fact that in the course of mp-stimulation the number of nest bees which heated up their thoraces strongly graded along a linear correlation (e.g.…”

Section: Identifying the Goals Of Bees In Ground And Flight Traffic Imentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to conventional terminology, guard bees patrol the entrance of the colony as well as the periphery of the nest in open colonies. The main purpose of guarding is to identify and remove foreign conspecific intruders (Breed et al 1992). However, guard bees may also play a role in recruiting other bees to defend against larger intruders (Moore et al 1987).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aggressive and Docile Colony Defence Patterns in Apis mellifera. A Retreater–Releaser Concept

et al. 2008

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Colony defence in Apis mellifera involves a variety of traits ranging from 'aggressive' (e.g. entrance guarding, recruitment of flying guards) to 'docile' (e.g. retreating into the nest) expression. We tested 11 colonies of three subspecies (capensis, scutellata, carnica) regarding their defensiveness. Each colony was selected as reportedly 'aggressive', 'intermediate' or 'docile' and consisted of about 10,000 bees. We applied three stimulation regimes (mechanical disturbance, exposure to alarm pheromones, and the combination of both) and measured their behaviours by tracking the rates of outflying bees at the entrance sites of the test hives. We provided evidence that for mechanical disturbances the test colonies resolved into two response types, if the 'immediate' defence response, assessed in the first minute of stimulation, was taken as a function of foraging: 'releaser' colonies allocated flying guards, 'retreater' colonies reduced the outside-hive activities. This division was observed irrespective of the subspecies membership and maintained in even roughly changing environmental conditions. However, if pheromone and mechanical stimulation were combined, the variety of colony defensiveness restricted to two further types irrespective of the subspecies membership: six of nine colonies degraded their rate of flying defenders with increasing foraging level, three of the colonies extended their 'aggressiveness' by increasing the defender rate with the foraging level. Such 'super-aggressive' colonies obviously are able to allocate two separate recruitment pools for foragers and flying defenders.

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“…First, Butler and Free (1952) showed that aggression against bees introduced to a foreign colony continues into the nest. Second, Breed et al (1992) recorded rejection of non-nestmates by different groups of bees and found an average of about 30% for foragers, nurses, and others, and 55% for guards. Considering that guards number in the dozens, while the other groups number in the thousands, it is clear which group has the potential to do the most work.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%