Abstract
We examined effects of the queen’s presence on diurnal rhythms of temperature preference (TP) and locomotor activity (LA) in worker honeybees’ groups. TP and LA of six queenless and six queenright (with the queen) groups of bees, consisting of 7–8 worker bees, were recorded in a thermal gradient system for four days, under light to darkness (LD) 12:12 photoperiod. The same experiments were conducted on five virgin queens (of the same age as those in the queenright groups), which were placed individually in the gradient chambers. The single virgin queens showed signs of distress and no rhythms of TP and LA. In contrast, there were diurnal rhythms of TP and LA in both group variants with daytime activity and nighttime rest. However, the queen’s presence exerted a strong calming effect, reducing LA of bees both at day- and nighttime. The nighttime minimum LA of queenright groups was five times lower than that in queenless groups. Moreover, there was a reversal of the diurnal pattern of TP in queenright groups. The results are discussed in terms of the bee colony organization as a superorganism.
Highlights
The honeybee (Apis mellifera Linnaeus, 1758) is a species living in societies counting up to 80 thousand individuals [1]
Thermal preference of single queens was not affected by the time of day (Student’s paired t-test daytime vs. nighttime; p = 0.2899), while there was a significant difference in locomotor activity between daytime and nighttime (Student’s paired t-test; p = 0.0372)
The presence of the queen modified the daytime and nighttime averages of ambient temperature selected by bees
Summary
The honeybee (Apis mellifera Linnaeus, 1758) is a species living in societies counting up to 80 thousand individuals [1]. Reproduction ability and division of labor are based on morphological and physiological polymorphism, including differences between a prolific queen and the rest of infertile female workers [7,8]. The queen marks her reproductive domination by secreting pheromones. These substances play a crucial role in the honeybee colony organization throughout the entire life of the queen [4,9,10,11,12]. During the periods of their motor activity, these insects are endothermic (i.e., they obtain heat for body temperature elevation using their own energy metabolism), while, during resting periods, they become ectothermic (i.e., their body temperature follows changes in ambient temperature) [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]
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