Download or read book Assessment of Pollen Stores by Foragers in Honey Bee Colonies Apis Mellifera L written by D. Mace Vaughan and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Influence of Pollen Quality and Pollen based Cues on the Nutrition and Foraging Behaviour of Honey Bees Apis Mellifera L written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Changes in honey bee, 'Apis mellifera' L., worker fitness were determined after feeding caged, newly-emerged bees one of eight pollen diets. Freshly-collected pollen was compared with pollen that had been stored for one year at -30C in an oxygen-reduced atmosphere. Development of hypopharyngeal glands and ovaries was found to be correlated with the amount of protein consumed, and for some diets, protein appeared to be allocated between ovaries and glands differentially. Storing pollen for one year did not affect gland or ovary development. A second experiment was conducted to determine whether honey bee colonies responded to changes in the nutritional quality of their stored pollen reserve. Colony pollen reserves were manipulated either quantitatively or qualitatively, at high and low levels. Foraging rates, and the weight and species composition of pollen loads were determined. Colonies responded to a decrease in the quantity or quality of their pollen reserve by increasing the proportion of pollen foragers, without altering the overall foraging rate. Inexperienced foragers collected heavier loads and more species of pollen per foraging trip, and specialized on larger, more proteinaceous pollen than experienced foragers. Colonies appear to respond to deficiencies in stored protein levels by increasing the gross amount of pollen returned to the colony, rather than by specializing on pollen having a higher protein content. Colony-level responses to deficiencies in stored protein may be manifested by an increase in the ratio of naive to experienced foragers. Foragers receive colony-level feedback about pollen quality in order to match pollen intake with the protein need of the colony. In a third study, pollen-based foraging cues were evaluated using two-choice bioassays in a flight and rearing room. The importance of pollen grain size, protein content, handling time and odour were assessed as foraging cues for worker bees. Pollen odour was the dominant cue foragers us.

Download or read book The Foraging Behavior of the Honey Bee Apis mellifera L written by John Purdy and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2023-10-27 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Foraging Behavior of the Honeybee (Apis mellifera, L.) provides a scholarly resource for knowledge on the regulation, communication, resource allocation, learning and characteristics of honeybee foraging behavior at the individual and colony level. Foraging, in this context, is the exploration of the environment around a honey bee hive and the collection of resources (pollen, nectar, water, etc.) by bees in the worker caste of a colony. Honeybees have the unique ability to balance conflicting and changing resource needs in rapidly changing environments, thus their characterization as “superorganisms made up of individuals who act in the interest of the whole. This book explores the fascinating world of honey bees in their struggle to obtain food and resources in the ecosystem and environment around the hive. Written by a team of international experts on honey bee behavior and ecology, this book covers current and historical knowledge, research methods and modeling used in the field of study and includes estimates of key parameters of energy utilization, quantities of materials collected, and identifies inconsistencies or gaps in current knowledge in the field. Establishes a basis of current knowledge on honeybees to build and advance understanding of their foraging behavior Addresses stressors such as habitat loss, climate change, pesticides, pests and diseases Presents concise concepts that facilitate direct traceability to the original underlying research

Download or read book Evaluation of Physiological and Pheromonal Factors Regulating Honey Bee Apis Mellifera L hymenoptera written by Ramesh Reddy Sagili and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation examines some important physiological and pheromonal factors regulating foraging and colony growth in honey bee colonies. The first study analyzed effects of soybean trypsin inhibitor (SBTI) on the development of hypopharyngeal gland, midgut enzyme activity and survival of the honey bee. In this study newly emerged caged bees were fed pollen diets containing three different concentrations of SBTI. Bees fed 1% SBTI had significantly reduced hypopharyngeal gland protein content. This study indicated that nurse bees fed a pollen diet containing at least 1% SBTI would be poor producers of larval food. In the second study nurse bee biosynthesis of brood food was manipulated using SBTI, and the resulting effects on pollen foraging were measured. Experimental colonies were given equal amounts of SBTI treated and untreated pollen. SBTI treatments had significantly lower hypopharyngeal gland protein content than controls. There was no significant difference in the ratio of pollen to non-pollen foragers and pollen load weights collected between the treatments. These results supported the pollen foraging effort predictions generated from the direct independent effects hypothesis. In the third study we tested whether brood pheromone (BP) regulated queen egg laying via modulation of worker-queen interactions and nurse bee rearing behaviors. This experiment had BP and control treatments. Queens in the BP treatment laid greater number of eggs, were fed for a greater amount of time and were less idle. Significantly more time was spent in cell cleaning by the bees in BP treatments. The results suggest that brood pheromone regulated queen egg-laying rate by modulating worker-queen interactions and nurse bee rearing behavior. The final study of this dissertation focused on how dose-dependent BP-mediated division of labor affected the partitioning of non-foraging and foraging work forces and the amount of brood reared. Triple cohort colonies were used and there were three treatments, Low BP, High BP and Control. Low BP treatments had significantly higher ratio of pollen to non-pollen foragers and greater pollen load weights. Low BP treatment bees foraged at a significantly younger age. This study has shown that BP elicits dose-dependent modulation of foraging and brood rearing behaviors.

Download or read book The Pollen Foraging Ecology of Honey Bees Apis Mellifera in a Fragmented Environment written by Byeong Hon Park and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honey bees recruit foragers to rich food sources through the waggle dance. The waggle dance has been used extensively to study the foraging ecology of honey bees in various habitats. We decoded waggle dances and used DNA barcoding of bee-collected pollen to characterize the foraging ecology of honey bees Apis mellifera L.) over 17 months around La Jolla, California, a heavily fragmented environment containing urban, semi-urban, and patches of native scrub habitats. We divided the year into three distinct seasons (dormant, growth, and dry) based on natural patterns of warming and rainfall to understand how honey bee foraging varies over ecologically relevant temporal scales in a fragmented environment. We detected a significant effect of season on foraging distances. We also found that colonies focused their foraging efforts on few patches during the dormant season and performed increasingly wider searches for pollen with changes in season. Lastly, we detected significant seasonal turnover in the proportion of pollen loads with native or non-native pollen. Bees focused their pollen foraging on native species during the dormant season; both native and non-native species during the growth season; and, non-native species during the dry season. Our results show that honey bees are capable of adjusting their foraging behavior with season to exploit common, abundant native and non-native flowers, illustrating the remarkable adaptability of honey bees in fragmented habitats. Furthermore, our study indicates that honey bees may serve as pollinators of common native plants in light of declines in native pollinators bought on by habitat fragmentation.

Download or read book Honeybee Ecology written by Thomas D. Seeley and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book presents honeybees as a model system for investigating advanced social life among insects from an evolutionary perspective. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book Pollination and Floral Ecology written by Pat Willmer and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-25 with total page 790 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pollination and Floral Ecology is a very comprehensive reference work to all aspects of pollination biology.

Download or read book Foraging Performance of Honey Bees apis Mellifera written by Guiyun Deng and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Investigations of the Honey Bee Pollen hoarding Syndrome written by Jennifer Mariko Tsuruda and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Genetic and Genotypic Components of Foraging and Defensive Behavior in Honey Bee Apis Mellifera L Colonies written by Ernesto Guzman-Novoa and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Superorganism written by Bert Holldobler and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of "The Ants" render the extraordinary lives of the social insects--ants, bees, wasps, and termites--in this visually spectacular volume. 110 color and 100 black-and-white illustrations.

Download or read book Influence of Landscape Composition Landscape Diversity and Conservation Management on Bee Health Via a Pollen Nutrition Mechanism written by Gabriela Marie Quinlan and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bees are the most important pollinators in agricultural systems, with honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) in particular providing the majority of pollination services on commercial farms. However, due to interacting stressors including lack of nutrition and disease, honey bees and other bee species are experiencing elevated loss rates compared to historical records. Access to abundant, high quality, continuous nutrition in the landscape has been suggested as a means of promoting bee health. To test this, I studied honey bee and bumble bee colonies in 12 apiaries that ranged in land cover composition of the surrounding forage landscape. Honey bee colony cluster size and brood area at the end of the summer were most closely related to post-spring pollination colony size and other colony-level variation, whereas bumble bee colony weight, gyne and drone production were related to surrounding land covers. This demonstrates the importance of accounting for potentially confounding honey bee colony variation in landscape-scale studies. To determine if diversity of land covers affected honey bee pollen foraging and colony size, I also measured honey bee colony size and incoming pollen at 12 apiaries located within landscapes of differing land cover diversity, and found that the relationship between land cover diversity, incoming pollen quantity and colony cluster size changed over time. This suggests that land cover diversity alone is insufficient for predicting patterns in honey bee landscape nutrition studies in this region. Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land may include flowering, herbaceous species in seed mixes, but in states such as Michigan with abundant forage in unmanaged habitats, it is unclear if CRP investments have unique floral composition, and foraging by honey bees and wild bees. I assessed floral composition and bee visitation on CRP land as compared to analogous unmanaged fields and roadside ditches in 31 triplicate sites. Floral abundance, species richness, native flower abundance, and inflorescence coverage were all higher on CRP land, as were honey bee and wild bee visitation, indicating that herbaceous CRP promotes bee foraging through unique floral composition, namely floral density. By assessing the quantity and quality of incoming pollen at apiaries while concurrently surveying floral communities in nearby grassy-herbaceous forage habitat, I found that crude protein in collected pollen decreased throughout the summer, concurrent with decreasing floral richness and abundance. This suggests pollinator plantings should include protein-rich, late-blooming species in their seed mixes. Because nutrition is closely tied to disease in honey bees, supplementing protein may promote recovery from diseases such as European foulbrood. To compare different approaches to managing this disease, European foulbrood-infected colonies were treated with traditional antibiotics, antibiotics with a soy-based protein supplements, soy-based supplement alone, pollen-based supplement, probiotics, or left untreated. There was no significant difference among non-antibiotic treatments in post-treatment recovery speed or nurse bee physiology, suggesting these supplemental feeding treatments and probiotics provide no treatment benefits for European foulbrood. Based on this research, accounting for colony-level variation is essential in honey bee landscape studies. Adding pollinator conservation habitat with an increased emphasis on late-season, protein-rich pollen species in seed mixes can benefit honey bees and wild bee species. This work provides new insights into the effects of landscapes on honey bee and wild bee foraging, nutrition and health by examining different aspects of these indirect relationships.

Download or read book Regulation of the Number of Foragers on a Constant Food Source by Honey Bee Colonies written by Richard Nowogrodzki and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Effects of Pollen Collected by Honey Bees from Pollination Dependent Agricultural Cropping Systems on Honey Bee Nutrition written by Ellen Topitzhofer and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Managed honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies are important pollinators of many cultivated crops. Honey bee colony declines averaging 30% annually in the United States for the past 7 years have caused significant concern and hence have been a topic of intensive investigation. These declines are reportedly due to multiple factors. Poor nutrition, which may be a result of current migratory pollination practices, is one such factor. Migratory pollination is a common practice of beekeepers from the Pacific Northwest and involves the placement of managed honey bee colonies within a series of cropping systems. There is a gap in knowledge on how migratory pollination practices impact honey bee nutrition. To understand the potential impacts of migratory pollination on honey bee nutrition, it is critical to assess the diversity of pollen collected by bees when colonies are placed adjacent to these cropping systems. In this study, we describe the diversity of pollen collected by honey bee colonies managed by beekeepers in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States when placed in seven major cropping systems. We quantified the percent of target crop pollen and overall diversity of pollen collected by honey bees when colonies were placed in these cropping systems. We collected and identified pollen in almond (Prunus dulcis (Mill.)), cherry (Prunus avium L.), highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum L.), meadowfoam (Limnanthes alba Benth.), white clover (Trifolium repens L.), radish (Raphanus sativus L.), and carrot (Daucus carota (Hoffm.)) cropping systems. We found that pollen collected from colonies placed in almond cropping systems was predominately Prunus sp., and hence, low in pollen diversity. At the other end of the spectrum, pollen collected from colonies placed adjacent to blueberry cropping systems did not yield any target pollen types (Highbush blueberry, Vaccinium corymbosum L.), but was high in overall pollen diversity. The pollen collected from colonies placed in other cropping systems was largely intermediate in diversity between these two extremes. There were not many plant species in bloom when pollen was collected from colonies placed in almond cropping system, whereas more plants were in bloom when we collected pollen from colonies placed in blueberry cropping system. The results of this study demonstrate that honey bees collected pollen from plants in the surrounding environment and collected different degrees of pollen diversity across different cropping systems in which the colonies were placed. We further determined if pollen diversity influences colony-level protein utilization and biosynthesis of protein in nurse bees by conducting a pollen feeding experiment. Pollen collected from four different cropping systems in the first study was used to formulate four different diets, each varying in pollen diversity. We measured protein consumption in experimental colonies and by sampling nurse bees from each colony to estimate hypopharyngeal gland protein content and proteolytic enzyme activity after five weeks of feeding on the experimental pollen diets. Experimental colonies fed on pollen collected from almond cropping system exhibited a high protein consumption rate. However, low protein content as found in hypopharyngeal glands of nurse bees in these colonies. The nurse bees in these colonies also had low proteolytic enzyme activity, which indicates a lower rate of protein digestion. Overall, these results suggest that the diet representing pollen collected from almond cropping systems had low digestion rate and may have resulted in lower nurse bee hypopharyngeal gland protein. However, we cannot say this with certainty, as there were other confounding factors involved, such as presence of pesticides in the pollen collected from the cropping systems.

Download or read book Neurobiology of Chemical Communication written by Carla Mucignat-Caretta and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2014-02-14 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intraspecific communication involves the activation of chemoreceptors and subsequent activation of different central areas that coordinate the responses of the entire organism—ranging from behavioral modification to modulation of hormones release. Animals emit intraspecific chemical signals, often referred to as pheromones, to advertise their presence to members of the same species and to regulate interactions aimed at establishing and regulating social and reproductive bonds. In the last two decades, scientists have developed a greater understanding of the neural processing of these chemical signals. Neurobiology of Chemical Communication explores the role of the chemical senses in mediating intraspecific communication. Providing an up-to-date outline of the most recent advances in the field, it presents data from laboratory and wild species, ranging from invertebrates to vertebrates, from insects to humans. The book examines the structure, anatomy, electrophysiology, and molecular biology of pheromones. It discusses how chemical signals work on different mammalian and non-mammalian species and includes chapters on insects, Drosophila, honey bees, amphibians, mice, tigers, and cattle. It also explores the controversial topic of human pheromones. An essential reference for students and researchers in the field of pheromones, this is also an ideal resource for those working on behavioral phenotyping of animal models and persons interested in the biology/ecology of wild and domestic species.

Download or read book Status of Pollinators in North America written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2007-05-13 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pollinators-insects, birds, bats, and other animals that carry pollen from the male to the female parts of flowers for plant reproduction-are an essential part of natural and agricultural ecosystems throughout North America. For example, most fruit, vegetable, and seed crops and some crops that provide fiber, drugs, and fuel depend on animals for pollination. This report provides evidence for the decline of some pollinator species in North America, including America's most important managed pollinator, the honey bee, as well as some butterflies, bats, and hummingbirds. For most managed and wild pollinator species, however, population trends have not been assessed because populations have not been monitored over time. In addition, for wild species with demonstrated declines, it is often difficult to determine the causes or consequences of their decline. This report outlines priorities for research and monitoring that are needed to improve information on the status of pollinators and establishes a framework for conservation and restoration of pollinator species and communities.

Download or read book The Wisdom of the Hive written by Thomas D Seeley and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes and illustrates the results of more than fifteen years of elegant experimental studies conducted by the author to investigate how a colony of bees is organized to gather its resources. The results of his research--including studies of the shaking signal, tremble dance, and waggle dance--offer the clearest, most detailed picture available of how a highly integrated animal society works.