Worker piping in honey bees (Apis mellifera): the behavior of piping nectar foragers

Thom, Corinna; Gilley, David C.; Tautz, Jürgen

doi:10.1007/s00265-002-0567-y

Cited by 36 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Stop signaling increased when a feeding station was available (Thom et al, 2003). Most of the stop signaling activity was by tremble dancers, although non-waggle dancing nectar foragers also performed the stop signal (Thom et al, 2003). Tremble dancers that used the stop signal ended up staying in the hive for longer than those that did not use the stop signal (Thom et al, 2003).…”

Section: What Elicits the Stop Signal?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: What Elicits the Stop Signal?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thom et al (2003) observed colonies both when they had access to a sugar water feeding station and when they were foraging under natural conditions. Stop signaling increased when a feeding station was available (Thom et al, 2003). Most of the stop signaling activity was by tremble dancers, although non-waggle dancing nectar foragers also performed the stop signal (Thom et al, 2003).…”

Section: What Elicits the Stop Signal?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An additional signal, and the focus of this article, is the stop signal. Sometimes referred to as the "brief piping signal," (e.g., Seeley and Tautz, 2001;Thom et al, 2003) in addition to "peeps" (Esch et al, 1965), "squeaking" (von Frisch, 1967), and "short squeaks" (Kirchner, 1993a), the stop signal is an acoustic signal produced by a bee briefly vibrating her wing muscles (with little wing movement), often while butting her head against another bee (a video of honey bees performing the stop signal can be found in the online Supplementary Material).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The anti-waggle dance: use of the stop signal as negative feedback

Kietzman

Visscher

2015

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Numerous activities within honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies rely on feedback loops for organization at the group level. Classic examples of these self-organizing behaviors occur during foraging and swarm nest site selection. The waggle dance provides positive feedback, promoting foraging at a specific location or increased scouting at a potential nest site. Rather less well known than the waggle dance is the stop signal, a short vibration often delivered while butting against a dancing bee. It is currently best understood as a counter to the waggle dance, offering negative feedback toward the advertised foraging location or nest site. When the stop signal is received by a waggle dancer she is more likely to terminate her dance early and retire from the dance floor. Bees that experienced danger or overcrowding at a food source are more likely to perform the stop signal upon their return to the colony, resulting in an inhibition of foraging at that location. During a swarm's nest site selection process, scout bees that visited a different site than the one being advertised are more likely to stop-signal the waggle dancer than are scouts that had visited the same site. Over time, the scout bees build recruitment to a single site until a quorum is reached and the swarm can move to it. The balance between the positive feedback from the waggle dance and the negative feedback from the stop signal allows for a more sensitive adjustment of response from the colony as a unit. Many of the processes associated with the feedback loops organizing a honey bee colony's activities are in striking parallel to other systems, such as intercellular interactions involved in motor neuron function.

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Section: What Elicits the Stop Signal?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: What Elicits the Stop Signal?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: What Elicits the Stop Signal?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The anti-waggle dance: use of the stop signal as negative feedback

Kietzman

Visscher

2015

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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“…This recruitment signal is paired with a stop signal that inhibits dancing (Kirchner, 1993;Nieh, 1993;Pastor & Seeley, 2005;Seeley et al, 2012) when foragers experience conspecific attack (Nieh, 2010) or food source overcrowding (Lau & Nieh, 2009;Nieh, 1993;Thom, 2003). The stop signal is a 300e400 Hz vibrational signal with a duration of approximately 150 ms (Lau & Nieh, 2009;Seeley et al, 2012) that a worker usually delivers while butting its head into the body of the receiver, causing the receiver to momentarily freeze (Kietzman, 2015;Michelsen, Kirchner, & Lindauer, 1986;Nieh, 1993;Thom, Gilley, & Tautz, 2003). Although they can be triggered by peril, stop signals are not necessarily warning signals because they inhibit recruitment dancing in another context, house hunting (Seeley et al, 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

Honeybees tune excitatory and inhibitory recruitment signalling to resource value and predation risk

Jack-McCollough

Nieh

2015

Animal Behaviour

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Group-foraging animals can coordinate their activities by performing positive signals that increase foraging or inhibitory signals that decrease recruitment when foragers detect danger. However, it is unclear whether foragers tune their excitatory and inhibitory signalling according to food value and predation risk. We therefore studied the signals that honeybee foragers perform before and after being attacked by live predators (wasps and spiders) or a robo-predator at a nectar source. Predator attacks significantly reduced recruitment dancing and increased stop signalling, which inhibits dancing for the dangerous resource. Attack equally reduced dancing for all sucrose concentrations. However, foragers factored travel costs into their positive signalling. At the feeder with greater travel cost (100 m), bees danced less when they responded more severely to attacks. At the low travel cost feeder (1 m), there was no significant effect of attack response severity upon dancing. Attacks increased inhibitory signal production. Live and robo-predator attacks elicited 131-fold more stop signals from foragers as compared to control treatments of freshly dead predators that did not attack. However, food profitability, distance and sucrose concentration did not alter stop signalling. We suggest that this pattern may generally characterize excitatory/inhibitory signal pairs in group foraging. Foragers tune positive signalling (recruitment) to food quality and peril, and this is countered by an inhibitory signal that is tuned to danger but not resource value.

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