Past experiences organize social behavior in honeybees: basic knowledge and application fields.

FARINA WM; ARENAS, ANDRÉS; DIAZ, PC; RAMIREZ, GABRIELA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 42º Congreso Internacional de Apicultura Apimondia 2011; 2011

Apimondia

PAST EXPERIENCES ORGANIZE SOCIAL BEHAVIOR IN HONEYBEES: basic knowledge and application fields Farina, W.M.; Arenas, A.; Díaz, P.C.; Ramírez, G.  Grupo de Estudio de Insectos Sociales, Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, IFIBYNE, CONICET, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Tel: (+5411) 4576 3445. walter@bg.fcen.uba.ar   Past experiences affect honeybee individual and social behavior both within and outside the hive. Some of these experiences imply associations between odor and reward which can be stable and long-term. Many of these learning events take place within the colony while bees share the incoming scented food and can be quantified with standardized behavioral assays. Then it is possible to state questions such as how many hive mates could assess this food-related information, how fast it is propagated and how long this information persists within the hive. To answer these questions we have investigated the underlying behaviors of bees involved inside the hive and also the decision making process of foragers at the feeding site. Besides, based on the long-lasting effect of this type of social information and with the aim to approach this issue to application field, we set out to try improving the management of beehives used to crop pollination. With an integrative approach we probe how feasible it is to manipulate colonies to forage selectively in specific crops. We produced a synthetic mix of volatiles that honeybees cannot discriminate from the natural odor of sunflowers. Honeybee colonies treated with this mix showed higher levels of foraging activity at the sunflower field than the colonies treated with other mixes. Then, evidences at the levels of cognition and honeybee ecology suggest a prompt foraging task in sunflower crops, a fact that opens the possibility for an improved efficiency in pollination and crop yield by using beehives.