The Behaviour of Worker Honeybees At the Hive Entrance

Butler, C. G.; Free, J. B.

doi:10.1163/156853951x00179

Cited by 101 publications

(38 citation statements)

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“…Guard bees were initially identified by their characteristic posture of standing with their forelegs off the ground and antennae facing forward (Butler and Free, 1952;Moore et al, 1987). Identification was verified by other guard behaviours including remaining on the entrance platform rather than flying off, walking in front of the entrance, and behaving aggressively towards intruders.…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social insects are popular organisms for the study of group level recognition, in which members are distinguished from non-members, because colonies normally possess entrance guards to recognize and exclude intruders, whilst allowing nestmates to enter (ants: Hölldobler and Wilson, 1990;wasps: Gamboa et al, 1996;termites: Wilson, 1971; and honey bees: Butler and Free, 1952;Moore et al, 1987). Within the social insects, the honey bee (Apis mellifera) is a popular study system (Getz, 1991;Breed et al, 2004a) because guard worker bees can encounter a variety of harmful intruders, specifically conspecific robbers from other honey bee colonies and allospecific intruders such as hornets (Vespa spp.)…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Guard honey bees intercept and examine incomers at the nest entrance (Butler and Free, 1952) and are thought to differentiate between nestmates and intruders by comparing the cues present on each incomer with a template representing the colony . The maximum acceptable amount of dissimilarity between the template and the cue is the acceptance threshold (Reeve, 1989).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Recognition errors by honey bee (Apis mellifera) guards demonstrate overlapping cues in conspecific recognition

Couvillon¹,

Roy²,

Ratnieks³

2009

J. of Api. Res

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SummaryHoney bee (Apis mellifera) entrance guards discriminate nestmates from intruders. We tested the hypothesis that the recognition cues between nestmate bees and intruder bees overlap by comparing their acceptances with that of worker common wasps, Vespula vulgaris, by entrance guards. If recognition cues of nestmate and non-nestmate bees overlap, we would expect recognition errors. Conversely, we hypothesised that guards would not make errors in recognizing wasps because wasps and bees should have distinct, non-overlapping cues. We found both to be true. There was a negative correlation between errors in recognizing nestmates (error: reject nestmate) and nonnestmates (error: accept non-nestmate) bees such that when guards were likely to reject nestmates, they were less likely to accept a nonnestmate; conversely, when guards were likely to accept a non-nestmate, they were less likely to reject a nestmate. There was, however, no correlation between errors in the recognition of nestmate bees (error: reject nestmate) and wasps (error: accept wasp), demonstrating that guards were able to reject wasps categorically. Our results strongly support that overlapping cue distributions occur, resulting in errors and leading to adaptive shifts in guard acceptance thresholds

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Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Recognition errors by honey bee (Apis mellifera) guards demonstrate overlapping cues in conspecific recognition

Couvillon¹,

Roy²,

Ratnieks³

2009

J. of Api. Res

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show abstract

“…The problem here is that a 10-fold increase from a very small number is still a very small number. If we contrast this experiment with the classic exploration of robbing behavior conducted by Butler and Free (1952), we can see the problem with the Couvillon et al approach. Butler and Free released large numbers of foreign bees into the entrances of several colonies one at a time and recorded the colony level response.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…As Butler and Free (1952) showed, aggression against bees that will eventually be accepted is part of nestmate recognition in honey bees. Hence, categorizing any bee that receives aggression as rejected, as Couvillon et al (2008) did, ignores the natural history of this system.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%