Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
ward, the scout will half-heartedly recruit, but if it was outstanding, she will dance
energetically.
When full, she leaves the flower, circles the patch a few times—to get her bearings
by noting landmarks and the position of the sun—then heads for home.
Because the forager has found what—to her, at least—is a new patch, she usually
tries to recruit other foragers to visit the patch. She initiates the dancing behavior on the
comb in the lower part of the broodnest where other foragers gather, either waiting to
be recruited or offloading pollen and nectar from a recent trip.
At the same time, the house bees who meet the scout on the dance floor have a mes-
sage of their own. If there is a shortage of nectar in the colony and room for new stores,
the house bees will unload the scout almost immediately. If, however, there is no room,
house bees can refuse incoming nectar, effectively shutting down foraging activity. A
critical situation confronts the colony at this point: If room is limited, yet there is a
strong nectar flow on, they may decide to place nectar in the broodnest, where the queen
is busy laying eggs. Doing so reduces the space in which the queen can lay eggs, and
may initiate swarming behavior, and in extreme cases, this may lead to nest abandon-
ment if there is not enough room for food storage and brood rearing to assure survival.
Other food-storing bees work with the pollen brought in by foragers, who dump it in
a cell near the broodnest. Young workers pack it into the cell, using their heads as rams,
until the cell is nearly filled. They leave a shallow space at the top of the cell to be filled
with honey, which acts as a preservative for long-term storage.
As hazardous as being a guard bee may seem, it doesn't hold a candle to the dangers
encountered by a forager. After graduating from the home duties of feeding, clean-
ing, and guarding, a mature worker bee is able to wander far and wide in search of
food. When out in the field, a lone honey bee can fall prey to birds, spiders, preying
mantises, and an array of other predators. The weather, too, works against her, with sud-
den showers, rapid temperature changes, or high winds making flying difficult. Other
dangers include rapid automobile traffic and even flyswatters.
One danger that can threaten nest mates as well as the forager is insecticides. When
the forager comes in contact with flowers that have had an insecticide applied to them,
she will probably die almost instantly. Worse, she may harvest contaminated nectar or
pollen and return home with it. If it is nectar, she will share this lethal cocktail, caus-
ing the death of others as it is moved throughout the colony. If she carries contaminated
pollen, she may die, but not before she stores it. Later, this lethal poison will be fed to
developing larvae, the queen, or nurse bees.
If the forager avoids these dangers, old age will finally claim this five- or six-week-
old bee. Foraging is the most personally expensive (excluding, of course the supreme
