Abstract
Vibro-acoustic communication is used by honey bees in many different social contexts. Our previous research showed that workers interact with their queen outside of the swarming period by means of wing-beating behaviour. Therefore, the aim of this study was to verify the hypothesis that the wing-beating behaviour of workers attending the queen stimulates her to lay eggs. The behaviour of workers and the queen was recorded using a high-speed camera, at first in the presence of uncapped brood in the nest and then without one. None of the queens performed wing-beating behaviour. On the other hand, the workers attending the queen demonstrated this behaviour two times per minute, on average, even in the presence of uncapped brood in the nest. After removing the combs with the uncapped brood, the incidence of wing-beating behaviour increased significantly to an average of four times per minute. Wing-beating behaviour did not differ significantly in its characteristics when uncapped brood was present or absent in the nest. During 3 days after removing the combs with the uncapped brood, there was no significant increase in the rate of egg lying by the queen. Therefore, the results presented here do not convincingly confirm that the wing-beating behaviour of workers affects the rate of queen's egg-lying. This negative result can be related to colony disturbance and longer time required by the queen to increase egg production.
Highlights
The western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is a highly social species which forms colonies consisting of thousands of cooperating individuals
The results presented here indicate that honey bee workers showed wing-beating behaviour in contact with the queen significantly more often after the combs with uncapped brood were removed from the nest, which is in line with our predictions
During 3 days after the combs removal, we were not able to detect significant increase of egg laying by the queen
Summary
The western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is a highly social species which forms colonies consisting of thousands of cooperating individuals. Their cooperation can only be productive if they effectively communicate with each other. Most of the interactions between honey bees occur inside the nest in darkness, where visual communication is not possible In this situation, their communication is mainly based on chemical (for review see Slessor et al 2005; Alaux et al 2010; Richard and Hunt 2013; Bortolotti and Costa 2014) and vibro-acoustic (for review see Kirchner 2006; Hrncir et al 2006; Hunt and Richard 2013) signals. The known vibro-acoustic signals include queen piping (Wenner 1962a; Grooters 1987; Michelsen et al 1986b), worker piping (Ohtani and Kamada 1980; Pratt et al 1996; Seeley and T(Mauictzhe2l0se0n1;eSt cahlV.loe1lg.:9(e08l162ea3t;4a5Nl6.7i8e29h0)1129)9, 3s;toSpchsilgengeall et al 2012), buzz-run signal (Rangel and Seeley 2008; Rittschof and Seeley 2008), waggle dance vibrations
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