The Behavior of Bees
Behavior Patterns in Bees
Honey bees are reasonably smart enough to learn such things as operant conditioning and color discrimination; the bees are also sensitive to taste, pheromones and UV. Bees can also store cognitive maps of their surroundings, location of food and knowing the times to look for food. A study published in 1983 in Science new journal showed that bees communicated much clearly with other bees in the same location. Foraging bees usually communicate with other worker bees through a waggle dance and use of odor plume in order to recruit other worker to join in their foraging task of searching and bring pollen and nectar to the hive. Honey bees display different behaviors depending on the type of activity they are undertaking. The activities include; egg laying, attending to the queen, swarming and protecting the colony. The worker bee normally takes up the duty of guarding the nest at one time in its life.
Guarding is a critical in a bee’s life, since it …show more content…
Honey bee workers are born to perform all the functions in the colony, while some worker stay in the hive other go in search of hive essentials such as nectar and pollen. Studies have actually shown that the entire honeybee workforce in the colony constitutes of genetically identical sister bees. The difference between the worker bees that stay at home and those that go out to forage reveals several distinct patters. For instance, the worker bees that go out to forage for food have been shown to have chemical tags in their genes that is different from those of bees that stay at home. The interesting part is however, the fact that these DNA patterns can be switch when the bees swap jobs. These behaviors or epigenetic states are thought to work over and above the bee’s normal genetic
Behavior Patterns in Bees
Honey bees are reasonably smart enough to learn such things as operant conditioning and color discrimination; the bees are also sensitive to taste, pheromones and UV. Bees can also store cognitive maps of their surroundings, location of food and knowing the times to look for food. A study published in 1983 in Science new journal showed that bees communicated much clearly with other bees in the same location. Foraging bees usually communicate with other worker bees through a waggle dance and use of odor plume in order to recruit other worker to join in their foraging task of searching and bring pollen and nectar to the hive. Honey bees display different behaviors depending on the type of activity they are undertaking. The activities include; egg laying, attending to the queen, swarming and protecting the colony. The worker bee normally takes up the duty of guarding the nest at one time in its life.
Guarding is a critical in a bee’s life, since it …show more content…
Honey bee workers are born to perform all the functions in the colony, while some worker stay in the hive other go in search of hive essentials such as nectar and pollen. Studies have actually shown that the entire honeybee workforce in the colony constitutes of genetically identical sister bees. The difference between the worker bees that stay at home and those that go out to forage reveals several distinct patters. For instance, the worker bees that go out to forage for food have been shown to have chemical tags in their genes that is different from those of bees that stay at home. The interesting part is however, the fact that these DNA patterns can be switch when the bees swap jobs. These behaviors or epigenetic states are thought to work over and above the bee’s normal genetic