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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Couvillon, Margaret J, Fensome, Katherine A, Quah, Shaun KL, Schürch, Roger
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Landes Bioscience 2014
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.
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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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