Abstract
Upon leaving the hive, foragers carry a small amount of honey, which they subsequently consume to generate energy for flight. We investigated the relationship between waggle-phase duration and crop volume in foragers (both dancers and dance followers) leaving the hive. Our findings indicate that these variables were positively correlated in the two types of bee, suggesting that they were able to adjust the amount of food that they carry depending on the distance to a food source. We also found that dance followers left the hive with a larger amount of honey than dancers. We suggest two possible explanations: (1) dance followers have less information about the location of the food source than dancers, who have a better knowledge of the surrounding area; or (2) honeybees lack a precise calibration method for estimating energy needs from waggle-run duration. The effect of foraging experience was confirmed: bees decreased their honey load at departure with repeated trips to a sugar-syrup feeder. Honeybees showed a different pattern of change when the feeder provided soybean flour as a pollen substitute, possibly because honeybees use honey not only as an energy source but also as “glue” to form “balls” of pollen on their hind legs. Based on our observations that followers of sugar-syrup foragers carry a different amount of honey in their crop than followers of soybean-followers, we suggest that waggle dancers also convey information concerning food type.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Prof. T. D. Seeley of Cornell University for his valuable comments and kind suggestions on this manuscript. We are grateful to Dr. Y. Sakai of the Brain Science Institute, Tamagawa University for stimulating discussions. Thanks are also due to Ms. K. Tsuruta and Ms. K. Matsuoka for experimental assistance in the preliminary studies. Two anonymous reviewers improved the manuscript greatly. This work was partially supported by a Strategic Research Center Establishment Program of Tamagawa University [S0901017] funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology, Japan.
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Harano, Ki., Mitsuhata-Asai, A., Konishi, T. et al. Honeybee foragers adjust crop contents before leaving the hive. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 67, 1169–1178 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-013-1542-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-013-1542-5