Honey Bee Shift Work in Comparison to Learning Behavior and Foraging Profiles

Abstract

Apis mellifera, also known as the European honeybee, sometimes shows a bias toward specific colors of flowers. They can also have preferences for foraging at specific times of the day, i.e. morning or afternoon shifts. The question this research aimed to explore was whether or not a bee who was particular in choosing a shift, was also particular regarding decision making while foraging. Our hypotheses were that shift work would correlate with foraging behavioral patterns and that bees would react to a decrease in flower reward by choosing the more reliable color of flower. We set up two beehives and taught them to visit feeders of sucrose water. The bees were then marked with different colors specific to hive and time of day to observe the shift work behavior. Then, the marked bees were followed in order to observe their decision-making process when the reward of a particular color of flower, that had previously been experienced as consistent, was reduced while the other remained higher. We found that the bees fit into one of four categories of foraging behavior, which did not correlate with their shift work preference. We also noticed that the frequencies of morning bees and afternoon bees were not evenly distributed.