Sociophysiology in honey bees and its role for bee health
The members of a colony typically spend most of their lives inside their nest, which therefore plays an essential role in shaping the organisms, both in development and evolution. We study the feedback of physical and chemical parameters of this self-made environment onto the physiology of the bees. Just like the physiology of an individual is regulated by internal feedback-loops, on the level of an insect colony “social homeostasis” takes place in which the members of the colony, by creating and maintaining their micro-environment, reach a higher-level feedback which may influence their physiology which in turn allows them to create and maintain their micro-environment.
The aspect we focus most on is “honey bee health”. Here we try to understand how the “sociophysiology” influences the health status of individual bees and whole colonies (social immunity).
The experimental approach includes classical physiology of individuals (behavioral biology, immunobiology, neurobiology) and monitoring of whole colonies. Behavioral performances of individuals are cognitive abilities, communication performance and orientation. We follow large numbers of individually identified bees life-long using high-technologies.
Honey bee workers carrying RFID-chips
Foto: Helga R. Heilmann, BEEgroup
We discovered that aspects of the behavioral abilities of adult bees depend critically on the temperature they experienced as pupae in the brood nest. Social insects are in a unique situation as they can create and regulate their micro-environment by cooperative activities. Honeybees are even more special as they, in principal, have complete control over their self-made environment, beginning with the synthesis of wax and controlling the micro-climate inside the nest. Here the temperature is of utmost importance.
Heater bees active in the brood region of the nest.
Foto: Rebecca Basile, BEEgroup
We have discovered two basic behavioral strategies used by heater bees to keep the brood nest at an optimal temperature and we determined the exact temporal temperature patterns which are applied by the heater bees to the pupae. As a side-effect we discovered the self-assembling principle according to which the hexagonal cells in a comb are shaped. In cooperation with W.Rössler (Zoology II, Biocenter, Universität Würzburg) we found, expected on the basis of the behavioral data, differences in the brains of differently raised bees.