6.11 Foraging Behaviour Flashcards
How many of the colony members are foragers?
a third
What is the average foraging sitance?
2.2km but this is landscape depedent
What direction do foragers land on flowers?
Into the wind to allow the odours to act as a landing signal.
What is the benefit of flower constancy?
Foragers will return to the same crop as long as there is good flow. Once a bee has learned a flower mechansiim it makes more sense to stick with it due to the learning invovled.
What is the average pollen load size?
2 x 8mg
What is the nectar average load?
30 - 50mg
What is the average water load?
25mg
How will certain flower types be worked?
•Open flowers – bee bites the anthers with mandibles and uses forelegs to pull them towards her body
•Tubular flowers – workers insert proboscis into corolla in search for nectar and pollen is collected incidentally adhering to mouthparts and legs
•Closed flowers – bees force petals apart with forelegs and gathers pollen on the mouthparts
•Catkins – bees run along them shake the pollen of onto her body
How will workers change their behaviour if on a profitable source?
They will work faster, more likely to advertise and carry greater loads
What do unemployed workers do?
They will follow waggle dances at random. Where the best sites are advertised by the most perisstent dances it is more likely that more profitable sites will be utilised. Random choosing enables the colony to distribute itself over mutliple sources and have diverse nutrition.
How do foragers become scouts?
As they age waggle dancers tend to become more experienced and follow less waggle dances so do more search for new sources
What does Jurgen Tautz believe workers teach to inexperienced foragers?
He believes they use their nasnaov pheremone to help inexperienced foragers to find correct sources
What may cause more scouts to exisit?
When there is a nectar dearth or there are fewer nectar producing flowers there will be more scouts. On the other hand if there is good sources of nectar then most foragers follow waggle dances
What are the 3 ways that a coony can devote more labour to a specific foragng task
• Recruiting non-foragers to the task
• Switch foragers not engaged in one task to another
• Activate foragers engaged in a task to worker harder (increased tempo rather than increased load)
How does a forager grad her foraging?
She grades it on netar intake rate of the colony (time taken to unload) and the quality of her forage (net energy efficency)
