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ANNO 1 Numero 1
Karl Crailsheim, Ronald Thenius, Thomas Schmickl [1]
Optimization of nectar foraging in honey bees

[1] Department for zoology - Karl Franzens University, Graz, Austria

In social insects, the foraging task is performed in parallel by thousands of foragers. Because they forage in an unstable environment, there is a demand for an adaptive regulation of this collective foraging. In honey bees a complex system of several parallel and serialized processes evolved that allows proper regulation of the foraging activity, of the nutrient processing and of the nutrient storage. Additionally the nectar foraging process is optimized to enable the colonies to choose between different nectar sources by selecting the energetically optimal one. All these processes work based on proximate mechanisms, which allow each individual to adapt its foraging strategy according to the colony’s demand. The individual bees gain and distribute information, by dances, via queuing delays and by trophallactic contacts. We discuss here in detail these proximate mechanisms, as well as their ultimate effects

Contact: karl.crailsheim@uni-graz.at