Biology Reference
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adults emerged over a 12-hour interval (Figure 2.14). Adult bees were
marked with paint and put into two groups. One group went into a hive
and experienced a normal environment as its members aged; members
of the other group went into a cage with other newly emerged adult bees,
were placed in an incubator, and were denied a normal social environ-
ment. Six days later another group of newly emerged bees was split, half
going into the hive, the others into the incubator. Six days later (12 days
at er the i rst group), a i nal group emerged and was placed directly into
the hive along with the 6- and 12-day incubator-treated bees. h is re-
sulted in three age groups of bees that experienced only natural hive
conditions (0, 6, and 12 days) and two age groups that had been deprived
of normal within-nest social experiences for 6 and 12 days, respectively.
If the observed changes in task performance and nest location are con-
sequences of centrifugal movement of bees, as proposed by the foraging-
for-work hypothesis, then caged bees of dif erent ages and the uncaged
0-day group should move through the nest and change tasks together.
However, Calderone found that they dif ered in the tasks they performed,
as one might expect for an internal, temporally correlated, physiologi-
Time Line
Age Group 4 Emerges
All Bees Introduced
Bees in Age Group 2 and
Age Group 3 from
Incubator Introduced
Age Group 1
Emerges
All Bees Introduced
Observations Start
Age Group 2 Emerges
1/2 Introduced
1/2 To Incubator
Start
Period B
Start
Period C
End
Start
Period A
Age Group 3 Emerges
1/2 Introduced
1/2 To Incubator
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
25
32
39
45
Figure 2.14.
Time line for the temporal polyethism experiment. Reprinted from
Animal Behavior,
51(3), Calderone NW, Page RE, “Temporal polyethism and
behavioural canalization in the honey bee,
Apis mellifera,”
631-643, Fig. 1 (1996),
with permission from Elsevier.
