If you were to visit a honey bee hive on a warm, sunny afternoon, you might see a large cloud of bees hovering just in front of the beehive in a way that differs from the normal, busy traffic of the foragers. Austrian scientist Karl von Frisch and others studying bee behavior first called this behavior vorspiel (playing about). When further examined, this behavior, now called playflight behavior or orientation flight behavior, occurs when the young adult bees take their first flights outside of the nest. This activity has a serious purpose and has nothing to do with play.
As honey bees age, their behavior changes in a regular and predictable fashion, and the oldest bees in the colony have the risky job of venturing into the outside world. But first they need to learn about their environment, so they can efficiently scout and forage without getting lost. Bees must integrate a lot of information in their middle age involving the location of their hive entrance, the sky-light compass, and how to find and handle flowers efficiently. Playflight behavior occurs when they begin this process by taking orientation or reconnaissance flights outside of the nest, and they return from these flights without food, water, or any other resource except information.
The cloud of bees seen during a playflight occurs because lots of young bees take these flights at one time. Without playflight behavior, bees cannot learn to navigate. What triggers the behavior is unknown, but we do know that it typically happens between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. on warm, sunny days. Interestingly, beehives kept indoors for long periods of time in experimental flight rooms with an artificial light-dark cycle still exhibit these bursts of activity, even though the bees presumably cannot detect the environmental cues for the specific time of day.
Poor nutrition, disease, parasitic mites, pesticides, and pollution are some of the threats that stress colonies and cause them to fail. Honey bees are totally dependent on the weather for creating their food supply, and malnutrition is common when a lack of rain or extreme temperatures interfere with the normal bloom cycle of plants that are their nectar and pollen sources. A rainy period keeps the bees inside the colony, forcing them to use up food that had been stored for the winter, and if the weather has been poor, plants may not be robust and the pollen may not contain the usual proteins, vitamins, and other substances required by the bees. If bees are in poor health, they are more susceptible to disease, including about twenty known viruses to which bees are vulnerable.
Insecticides are used as a seed treatment and in spray applications on plants. They become distributed throughout the tissues of the plants and can cause a toxic reaction when bees consume the nectar and pollen. Pollution also threatens habitat, as do housing developments and other large ground-clearing projects like airports, golf courses, and intensive agricultural projects that completely remove habitat.
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08192010
1. Classification of bees and evidence of their early existence
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