Fear of predators drives honey bees away from good food sources
Such fear drives bees to avoid food sources closely associated with predators and, interestingly, makes colonies of bees less risk-tolerant than individual bees, according to a study published in this week's issue of the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
"This strategy of colonies collectively exhibiting significantly more caution than the riskier individual foragers may help honey bees exploit all of the available food sources, with some intrepid foragers visiting more dangerous food while the colony judiciously decides how to best allocate its foraging," says James Nieh, a professor of biology at UC San Diego.
Nieh worked with scientists at Yunnan Agricultural University in China to study the impact on foraging Asian honey bees of the monstrous-looking Asian Giant hornet, Vespa tropica, and a smaller hornet species known as Vespa velutina, which has invaded Europe and now poses a threat to European honey bees.
"The Asian Giant hornets are dangerous, heavily armored predators," says Ken Tan, the first author of the paper, who also works at the Chinese Academy of Science's Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden. "Bee colonies respond by forming balls of defending bees, encasing the hornet and, in some cases, cooking it to death with heat generated by the bees."
The researchers found that bees treated the bigger hornet species, which is four times more massive than the smaller species, as more dangerous. In a series of experiments, they presented bees with different combinations of safe and dangerous feeders -- depending on their association with the larger or smaller hornets -- containing varying concentrations of sucrose.
"Bees avoided the dangerous feeders and preferred feeders that provided sweeter nectar," says Nieh. "However, predators are clever and can focus on sweeter food, ones which bees prefer. So we also tested how bees would respond when sweeter food was also more dangerous. What we found was that the individual bees were more risk-tolerant. They avoided the giant hornet at the best food, but continued to visit the lower quality food with the smaller hornet."
Other scientists involved in the research were Zongwen Hu, Weiwen Chen, Zhengwei Wang and Yuchong Wang, all of the Eastern Bee Research Institute of Yunnan Agricultural University.
Welcome to SUV System Ltd!
SUV System Ltd is ISO 90012008 Certified electronics distributor with 10 years of experiences.
We have built up long term business relationship with about many companies which are stockers and authorized agents. we have a steady and reliable supply to meet customer's demands to the greatest extent .Confidently, we are able to lower your cost and support your business with our years of professional service.
SUV System Ltd is Electronic Components Distributor Supplies,Find Quality Electronic Components Supplies Products IC(Integrated Circuits),Connectors,Capacitor,Resistors,Diodes,Transistors,LED at Suvsystem.com. Sourcing Other Energy, Environment, Excess Inventory Products from Manufacturers and Suppliers at Suvsystem.com
Electronic Components distributor:http://www.suvsystem.com
Connectors Distributor:http://www.suvsystem.com/l/Connectors-1.html
IC Distributor:http://www.suvsystem.com/l/IC(Integrated-Circuits)-1.html
LED Distributor:http://www.suvsystem.com/l/LED-1.html
Capacitor Distributor:http://www.suvsystem.com/l/Capacitor-1.html
Transistor Distributor:http://www.suvsystem.com/l/Transistors-1.html
Resistor Distributor:http://www.suvsystem.com/l/Resistors-1.html
Diode Distributor:http://www.suvsystem.com/l/Diodes-1.html
SUV System Ltd insists on the managing faith ofsincereness,speciality,foresight, win-win,so we build up stable-relationship customers located all over the world, including the States, Europe, Argentina, UAE, Malaysia, Australia,and India etc
we are focus on the following fields,and hope we can help you.
PANASONIC Resistors ST Transistors IC(Integrated Circuits) Resistor Arrays Civil IC VISHAY IC chip Filter saws ALTERA IC Transistors LITTELFUSE Diodes Schottky Diodes LINEAR IC Electronic News AD IC BB IC YAGEO Resistors Low Ohmic Resistors PANASONIC Kingbrigt LED Capacitor NXP Diodes Fleld Effect Transistors Digital Transistors Infineon Technologies Transistors components ELPIDA IC TI IC IDT IC MURATA IC ST Diodes Fairchild Semiconductor Transistors TOSHIBA Diodes Industrial IC Metal Can Packages Transistors ON Transistors ON Diodes Zener Diodes NXP Transistors Transistors Freescale Ligitek LED
http://www.suvsystem.com/a/6335.aspx
