Honey Bee Domestication

Introduction to Honey Bees

• Domestication involves humans selecting useful traits and animals adapting behaviors to human needs.
• Mutualism is when humans and animals rely on each other, both changing behavior.
• Domestication is considered mutualistic under contemporary evolution.
• Domestication has allowed for the growth of large human populations and cities.

Are Honey Bees Domesticated?

• Pro: honey bees kept for thousands of years in artificial hives.
• Pro: traits such as gentleness can be selected.
• Pro: domesticated insects include silkworms.
• Con: Bees are not dependent on humans.
• Con: Bees can revert to a feral state at any time.
• Con: Bees can take care of themselves.
• Apis mellifera (western honey bee) are mostly wild and live in Africa.
• Artificial selection complicated by queens mating with around 12 random males, overwhelming desired traits.
• Controlling queen mating is hard, radius is a 12sq mile radius.
• Artificial selection can decrease queen fitness and may not work.
• Asian elephants used for work, captured wild and trained.
• Wild elephants nothing changed genetically over the years, thus not domesticated.
• Certain bee populations are domesticated by controlled breeding in isolated areas.
• People prioritize productivity over aggressiveness in bee breeding.
• Beekeeping involves learning bee behavior.
• Modern beekeeping creates removable combs for health checks and honey removal.
• No widespread agreement on whether bees are domesticated.
• Commercial beekeeping does not necessitate knowledge of bee biology and vice versa.

Waggle Dances and Animal Communication

• Cues are passively obtained information from the environment.
• Receivers of cues include predators, mates, and parasites.
• Ex. Tracks, odors, sounds act as "cues."
• Signals are information intentionally sent from one animal to another. Signals are naturally selected.
• Signals can contain more precise information.
• Signals are often species-specific (eavesdropping can occur).
• Threat gestures evolve from movements before an attack.
• For example, dog growling.
• Bumble bee dances originate from ancestors finding food and unintentionally dispersing flower odors.
• Dances turn into a signal for food availability that can last 20 minutes, even without food.
• Context influences signal interpretation.
• A sender can warn receivers about a predator.
• Receiver behavior is used to understand signal meaning.
• The same signal can convey different meanings (attract a mate or assert territory).
• Queen pheromones tell messenger bees to interact or keep away.
• Honey bee signals primarily sent by foragers to other foragers or middle-aged bees to convey availability of food and coordinate activities.
• Ex. increased nectar processing when foragers find good food sources.

Waggle Dance Details

• Karl von Frisch discovered the waggle dance.
• Bees have color vision, polarized light vision, and UV light.
• Training methods: marked bees, observed for food quality and distance, tested color vision. Bees can see UV light but not red.
• The "run" in the waggle dance is the straight-line distance and waggling abdomen the bee moves.
• Feeders moved farther from nest result in longer runs across the hive of far distances.
• Bees measure distance using optic flow, the rate of image flow across the retina.
• Narrow tubes make foragers fly increases optic flow, making waggle dance indicate greater than actual distance.
• Added lines and patterns also change the distance indicated in the waggle dance.
• The angle of the waggle dance relative to vertical indicates the food source direction relative to the sun.
• The waggle dance indicates food source location and pollen color.
• Number of waggle dance runs indicates food quality (more runs = higher quality)
• This helps determine amount of bees recruited to retrieve nectar from the food site
• Bees determine quality of a food site based on how much energy they will gain.
• They do this via considering; distance of food site and quality of the nectar
• Waggle dance is sent via multiple sensory modalities (pheromones, sound, substrate vibration).
• The receiver pays attention to all of these factors. Sight not used as dance can be done in dark.

Bee Orientation and Navigation

• Orientation flights used by new foragers and bees moved to a new hive.
• Bees fly in arcs and use landmarks to orient themselves to the nest.
• Bees retain distance and angle information for path integration to find their way home.
• Bees use the sun's azimuth as a reference for direction.
• Polarized light is used if sunlight is blocked, using it with sun if they can.
• Bees use optic flow to calculate distance.
• Optic flow is movement of images across the retina as animal moves.
• They vary the black and white area (more stripes = farther distance) in a tube.
• Round dance indicates short distance to food.
• Waggle dance indicates long distance to food.
• Path integration used for distance and direction.
• Non-egocentric navigation - no knowledge of outside world
• Image matching (non-controversial): bee takes snapshot of world and stores in memory.
• Bees align to the skyline when they leave the hive.
• Bees store images and match them by moving relative to landmarks.
• Landmark size affects where bees look for food.
• Bees approach targets from a consistent direction.
• Motion parallax: how objects change in size and position as an animal moves towards them.
• Cognitive mapping in bees is controversial.
• No current evidence they have cognitive mapping.
• "Clock shift" bees, disrupt the clocks of bees taking novel routes home

Solitary and Primitively Social Bees

• Hymenoptera includes bees, wasps, ants.
• Most hymenoptera are parasitic, specifically parasitoids (lay eggs in the body of another organism).
• Aculeates have stingers, are all hymenoptera.
• Stinger is a modified ovipositor.
• Male bees can't sting.
• Many different families of aculeates
• Most are hunters like the tarantula hawks.
• Bees are dependent on pollen unlike other aculeates, which are hunters.
• Over 20,000 species of bees with the honey bee as dominant.
• Honey bees and ants share colony organization and function. Evolution of Bees:
• Bees radiated when the flowering plants radiated.
• Bees are the major insect pollinators.
• Hairy bodies used to move pollen
• Specialists on using pollen as a protein source
• Other, minor pollinators include birds, flies, butterflies, and other insects
• Halictidae (Sweat bees)
• Collect sweat from vertebrates
• Sometimes sting for no reason
• Common, look small, look metallic
• Highly diverse biology
• Primitively social: colony size is smaller, queen and worker differences not are not very large.
• Commercial Halictids
• Nomia melanderi (alkali bee): Commercial pollination of alfalfa; build bee beds (nests underground).
• Halictids:
• Solitary (ground nesters)
• Parasites: Lay eggs where other eggs have been laid in pollen, killing other egg
• Pros: can build up large permanent population and provide all pollination services
• Cons: takes time to build up population, needs particular soil and habitat
• Stenotritidae (2 genera limited to Australia)
• Megachilidae (mason or leafcutter bees)
• Large group of robust bees that show typical life history patterns.
• The build cells out of leaves or soil and provision each with pollen
• Inefficient pollen collectors and good pollinators
• Commonly used in agriculture
• Alfalfa leaf cutter (Megachile rotundata): Introduced to US in 1930s, used in westcoast in general
• Pros: can be purchased in large quantities and reliable pollinators
• Cons: many pests and diseases
• Blue mason bees: Megachilid bee used for tree fruit pollination

Apidae Bees: Highly Divergent Group

• Apidae Very large and divergent group of bees
• Apidae carry scopae (hairy legs for pollen transport).
• Those bees can be typical solitary.
• Scopae includes: centris, anthophora, allodapine, carpenter, and corbiculate Bees
  • Allodapine bees
  • Stingless bees: Tropical highly social colonies.
  • Large long lived bees: Collet odors from flowers to attract females (perfumes).

Efficiency vs Inefficiency

• Efficient collection means inefficient pollination.
• For example, if hairy body collects a lot of pollen, it can weigh down and collect less nectar but spread more pollen.

Bee Groups

• Corbiculate: they contain pollen baskets.
• Orchid bees that are Large and long-lived bees that Collect odors from flowers to attract females (perfumes).
• Stingless bees: they are Tropical highly social colonies.
  • They can't sting, but Colonies can be very long lived
• Bumble bees: Colonies are primitively social and fertilized queen overwinter as adults 2) in the spring they find a nest and start a new colony
• Used for commercial pollination in greenhouses.
• Do not pollinate well in doors.
• Honey do not buzz pollinate for pollen to fall off
• Colonies around a couple hundred → less complex division of labor
• Queen are not strongly different than workers
• Weak size and division of tasks within the hive.
• Size correlates with task.
• Some Honey Bees are social.
• Bumbles are social bees and Bumble bees are social bees that form small colonies and locate. Nest on the ground in burrows.
• Carpenter bees: Nest in wood that are (usually) solitary
• Few cases of incipient eusociality in wood

Social Bee Systems

• Eusocial is a society where non-reproductive individuals care for young.
• Eusociality includes the overlapping of generations, cooperative care of brood, and reproductive division of labor.
• Carpenter and bumble bees are not closely related
• Carpenter bee abdominal areas vs hairs on bumble bee bellies: Carpenter bees have no hair on abdomens, and Bumbles are usually hairy all over the place
• Eating into the base of nectar is nectar robbing, the plant doesnt get pollen so it breaks the mutualism.
• Bee that performs this Nectar robbing is common among plants with Honey bee but mandibles (jaws) are too weak to cut into most flowers Larger bees are mostly Bees like carpenter becs who are usually often the ones who cut into flowers to steal nectar, then honey bees use the slites cut.
• Honey uses the slits cut by larger bees, bumble also cut into Bee slits

Reading

• Notes include general information about bee and wasp splitting and types of bee classifications.
• Wasps and B's split 120 million years ago
• B's are hunting wasps that have gone vegetarian
• B's fall into seven familial ties classified on shared Similarities between bees

Four basic life history of Bees

• Parasites: Take over nest created by someone else
• Solitary: focused on females.
• Nesting: Ground Excavators, wood Excavators,
• Apidae Natural. History: have 6000 species

Social Bee Behavior

• Aggregation doesn't contribute to social.
• Aggregation: the grouping of animals
• Social behavior: the act of animals living in groups
• Parental care: any care in eggs that involves Any care in eggs that involves Any given case that. It’s rare unless. They advanced a type of groups that evolved with. These cases Cooperative Breeding/incipient eusociality:, simpler social groups. All the aphids in the gall are clones,some aphids transform into solders

Societies

• Roles more insects and are more morphologically similar
• Workers show specialization queens and workers :
• Factory based: less flexible, individuals are specialized
• Avanced eusocial: has roles less flexible/ more division/communication
• Super organism : is when convergent Evolution exits between.
• Social Physiology: This. Are systems that keep things. Flowing/ working well together. This happens in bee anatomy and caste systems Individuals (Units) are complex but as a whole, they are simple Four main lines of advanced social insects.
• Wasps: Factory like

Social Bees

• Notes on groups: Sphecid-like wasp,solitary wasp.
• Highly social has a lot of convergance(specialized units)
• Reading 226 to 249 Signals are