Honeybee foragers increase the use of waggle dance information when private information becomes unrewarding

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.01.014

Animal Behaviour

Volume 81, Issue 5, May 2011, Pages 949-954

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.01.014 Get rights and content

Social insect foragers often have access to both social and private information about the locations of food sources. In honeybees, Apis mellifera, foragers can follow waggle dances (social information) to obtain vector information about the location of profitable food sources or they can use route memories (private information) acquired during previous foraging trips. The relative use of social information versus private information is poorly understood and currently debated. It is hypothesized that social information should be prioritized when the use of private information has a low benefit. We tested this hypothesis by training foragers to a high-quality 2 M sucrose feeder, which subsequently became unrewarding. As foragers continued to experience zero reward from their private route information they increased the time spent following waggle dances advertising an alternative food source with the same odour. A significant proportion of foragers successfully switched to the food source indicated by dances. Overall, trained foragers showed a strong attachment to the known but currently unrewarding feeder, even after repeatedly following dances advertising a profitable alternative. Successful recruits to the novel food source advertised by the waggle dances had more social information about this source in that they had followed dances for longer. Our results suggest that honeybee foragers follow a strategy that is conservative in terms of switching from one food patch to another.

Section snippets

Methods

Experiments were performed in September and October 2009. Ivy, Hedera helix, was the only important natural pollen and nectar source available at that time. We studied three colonies of Apis mellifera at the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects, University of Sussex. Each colony was housed in an observation hive containing three deep Langstroth frames or the equivalent comb area in medium frames (H1–H3). Each colony was thriving with a queen, about 3000 workers, brood, pollen and honey

Dance Following of F1 Foragers

Across the three trials, F2 foragers performed 472 waggle dances comprising 5272 waggle runs (mean ± SD = 11.17 ± 8.05 per dance,) for the F2 feeder during test days 1 (245 dances) and 2 (227 dances). F1 foragers showed a strong interest in these dances and most (104 of 118, 88.1%) followed dances (4203 waggle runs in total). On average, F1 foragers followed 11.59 ± 5.60 (range 1–35) dances and 40.03 ± 28.92 (range 1–127) waggle runs for the F2 feeder, with six (5.8%) following more than 100 waggle runs.

Discussion

Foragers that repeatedly found that retrieving private information about feeding sites was unrewarded subsequently increased the number of waggle runs followed per dance for an alternative location of the same food type. As a consequence, foragers started switching from visiting the familiar but now unrewarding feeder, F1, to the unfamiliar but rewarding feeder, F2, advertised by F2 dancers (Fig. 1). F1 foragers did not increase their interest in dances advertising natural food sources. They

Acknowledgments

We thank Francisca Segers, Fiona Riddell, Tomer Czaczkes and Johanneke Oosten for help with data collection and Margaret Couvillon, Walter Farina and two anonymous referees for comments on the manuscript. C.G. was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF grant PBBEP3-123648).

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View full text

Honeybee foragers increase the use of waggle dance information when private information becomes unrewarding

Section snippets

Methods

Dance Following of F1 Foragers

Discussion

Acknowledgments

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

Current Opinion in Neurobiology

Journal of Theoretical Biology

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

Animal Behaviour

Animal Behaviour

Advances in the Study of Behavior

Current Biology

Memory and chemical communication in the orientation of two mass-recruiting ant species

Insectes Sociaux

Long-range foraging by the honey-bee, Apis mellifera L

Functional Ecology

Nine-spined sticklebacks exploit the most reliable source when public and private information conflict

Proceedings of the Royal Society B

The use of waggle dance information by honeybees throughout their foraging careers

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

Information flow and organization of stingless bee foraging

Apidologie

The role of internal and external information in foraging decisions of Melipona workers (Hymenoptera: Meliponinae)

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

Attendants and followers of honey bee waggle dances

Journal of Apicultural Research

The significance of landmarks for path integration in homing honeybee foragers

Naturwissenschaften

Why do honey bees dance?

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

How do newly recruited honey bees approach a food site?

Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Physiologie

Social learning of floral odours inside the honeybee hive

Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Teaching in tandem-running ants

Nature

The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees

Foraging reactivation in the honeybee Apis mellifera L.: factors affecting the return to known nectar sources

Naturwissenschaften

Propagation of olfactory information within the honeybee hive

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

Informational conflicts created by the waggle dance

Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Decision making in ant foragers (Lasius niger) facing conflicting private and social information

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology