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Summertime blues: August foraging leaves honey bees empty-handed
A successful honey bee forager tells her nestmates the location of good nectar and pollen with the waggle dance, a symbolic language that communicates a distance and direction. Because bees are adept at scouting out profitable forage and are very sensitive to energetic reward, we can use the distanc...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Landes Bioscience
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4203501/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25346794 http://dx.doi.org/10.4161/cib.28821 |
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author | Couvillon, Margaret J Fensome, Katherine A Quah, Shaun KL Schürch, Roger |
author_facet | Couvillon, Margaret J Fensome, Katherine A Quah, Shaun KL Schürch, Roger |
author_sort | Couvillon, Margaret J |
collection | PubMed |
description | A successful honey bee forager tells her nestmates the location of good nectar and pollen with the waggle dance, a symbolic language that communicates a distance and direction. Because bees are adept at scouting out profitable forage and are very sensitive to energetic reward, we can use the distance that bees communicate via waggle dances as a proxy for forage availability, where the further the bees fly, the less forage can be found locally. Previously we demonstrated that bees fly furthest in the summer compared with spring or autumn to bring back forage that is not necessarily of better quality. Here we show that August is also the month when significantly more foragers return with empty crops (P = 7.63e-06). This provides additional support that summer may represent a seasonal foraging challenge for honey bees. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4203501 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Landes Bioscience |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42035012014-10-24 Summertime blues: August foraging leaves honey bees empty-handed Couvillon, Margaret J Fensome, Katherine A Quah, Shaun KL Schürch, Roger Commun Integr Biol Article Addendum A successful honey bee forager tells her nestmates the location of good nectar and pollen with the waggle dance, a symbolic language that communicates a distance and direction. Because bees are adept at scouting out profitable forage and are very sensitive to energetic reward, we can use the distance that bees communicate via waggle dances as a proxy for forage availability, where the further the bees fly, the less forage can be found locally. Previously we demonstrated that bees fly furthest in the summer compared with spring or autumn to bring back forage that is not necessarily of better quality. Here we show that August is also the month when significantly more foragers return with empty crops (P = 7.63e-06). This provides additional support that summer may represent a seasonal foraging challenge for honey bees. Landes Bioscience 2014-04-09 /pmc/articles/PMC4203501/ /pubmed/25346794 http://dx.doi.org/10.4161/cib.28821 Text en Copyright © 2014 Landes Bioscience http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This is an open-access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. The article may be redistributed, reproduced, and reused for non-commercial purposes, provided the original source is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Article Addendum Couvillon, Margaret J Fensome, Katherine A Quah, Shaun KL Schürch, Roger Summertime blues: August foraging leaves honey bees empty-handed |
title | Summertime blues: August foraging leaves honey bees empty-handed |
title_full | Summertime blues: August foraging leaves honey bees empty-handed |
title_fullStr | Summertime blues: August foraging leaves honey bees empty-handed |
title_full_unstemmed | Summertime blues: August foraging leaves honey bees empty-handed |
title_short | Summertime blues: August foraging leaves honey bees empty-handed |
title_sort | summertime blues: august foraging leaves honey bees empty-handed |
topic | Article Addendum |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4203501/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25346794 http://dx.doi.org/10.4161/cib.28821 |
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