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The behavior of bees, both inside and outside depend on the combination of reflexes or natural reactions of the organism to certain stimuli. Reflexes are divided into inborn or unconditional reflexes and acquired through life experience or conditional reflexes. Thus the inborn instincts (a complex set of unconditioned reflexes) are feeding the larvae, the construction of combs, etc. In contrast the ability to distinguish the flowers of crap from the flowers of other plants is worked out by bees in the process of life experience on the basis of conditioned reflexes.
During orientation overflights young bees learn the location of their hives relative to the surrounding objects (trees, shrubs, other hives, etc.). It’s enough to move the hive aside at a distance even smaller than 1 m and so the returning forager bees search for it at the same place and they don’t find it immediately at the new place. If the hive is replaced over long distances the bees will not find it at all.
Bees remember the location not only of the hive, but also of the entrance. If the hive is lifted or put down or if the entrance is replaced to another part of the hive, bees on their way back will search for it for a long time. The same can be said about the colour of hives and changes in the objects surrounding the hive (another color of neighboring hives, cutting down trees, shrubs).
While collecting nectar or pollen each bee seeks to adhere to one type of plant. For example, when visiting flowers of buckwheat, bees do not visit other plant species until the buckwheat finishes blossoming. This is of great biological significance for pollination of plants. Only when a small number of flowering plants of different species blossom simultaneously bees visit several plant species during one flight.
After one plant species finishes blossom the bees that have collected nectar from its flowers join the bees visiting other plants or start looking for blossoming flowers of other plant species. In the latter case the bees are called the scout bees.
Having found a new source of food the bees gather honey in their honey stomach and after flying over the flowering plants several times to memorize their location they return to their hive. Bees memorize the road to the hive by the landmarks along the way (trees, shrubs, ponds, roads, etc.) and by the direction of the sun. According to the latest works of Frisch and Lindauer, the landmarks, where they occur, are more important than the direction of the sun.
The bee returns to the hive in an excited state. It gives brought nectar to receiver bees and she performs particular movements on the comb, known as “recruiting dance”, which appeals to other bees of the colony to seek sources of nectar flow. If food is found near the apiary, and no further than 100 meters from the hive, the bee quickly runs around a honeycomb cell, and then turns around and makes a circle in the opposite direction. Running across the comb from one bee to another it repeats these movements for several seconds. This dance is called round dance.
When flowering plants are found at a distance of more than 100 meters from the hive, the bees that have brought nectar from them perform this dance differently. First, they make a semicircle along several cells, then they run straightly across 2-3 cells, wagging its abdomen from side to side, and then they make a second semicircle in the opposite direction. The nature of dance, as well as the number of oscillations of the abdomen in a straight run, depends on the degree of excitation of the forager bee and, consequently, the remoteness of the flowering plants from the hive.
The farther the food source, the less number of oscillations is made by the bee during the straight run when dancing, it performs the dance as if with greater fatigue. This dance, in contrast to the round dance, is called the waggle dance. Dancing bees communicate not only the distance to the source of food, but also the direction to fly to flowering plants. Degree of the dancer (scout) bee’s excitation is transmitted to the surrounding bees. This helps them to find the plants from which "the dancers" have come.
The bees that surround the "dancer", sniff it, run to the entrance and fly out in search of melliferous plants with the same scent, which has been presented by the dancer bee. After some time, the bee, which was the first to find this source of food, goes to the source again. After gathering the nectar to the stomach and returning to the hive the bees perform the same dance, so more and more worker bees not engaged in collecting nectar from other plants fly to the new source of food. As soon as the plants stop or short down yielding nectar, the bees attending them will stop dancing. It is the way of regulating the number of bees on the flowers of plants yielding nectar.
Bees’ behaviour and their spatial orientation
The behavior of bees, both inside and outside depend on the combination of reflexes or natural reactions of the organism to certain stimuli. Reflexes are divided into inborn or unconditional reflexes and acquired through life experience or conditional reflexes. Thus the inborn instincts (a complex set of unconditioned reflexes) are feeding the larvae, the construction of combs, etc. In contrast the ability to distinguish the flowers of crap from the flowers of other plants is worked out by bees in the process of life experience on the basis of conditioned reflexes.
During orientation overflights young bees learn the location of their hives relative to the surrounding objects (trees, shrubs, other hives, etc.). It’s enough to move the hive aside at a distance even smaller than 1 m and so the returning forager bees search for it at the same place and they don’t find it immediately at the new place. If the hive is replaced over long distances the bees will not find it at all.
Bees remember the location not only of the hive, but also of the entrance. If the hive is lifted or put down or if the entrance is replaced to another part of the hive, bees on their way back will search for it for a long time. The same can be said about the colour of hives and changes in the objects surrounding the hive (another color of neighboring hives, cutting down trees, shrubs).
While collecting nectar or pollen each bee seeks to adhere to one type of plant. For example, when visiting flowers of buckwheat, bees do not visit other plant species until the buckwheat finishes blossoming. This is of great biological significance for pollination of plants. Only when a small number of flowering plants of different species blossom simultaneously bees visit several plant species during one flight.
After one plant species finishes blossom the bees that have collected nectar from its flowers join the bees visiting other plants or start looking for blossoming flowers of other plant species. In the latter case the bees are called the scout bees.
Having found a new source of food the bees gather honey in their honey stomach and after flying over the flowering plants several times to memorize their location they return to their hive. Bees memorize the road to the hive by the landmarks along the way (trees, shrubs, ponds, roads, etc.) and by the direction of the sun. According to the latest works of Frisch and Lindauer, the landmarks, where they occur, are more important than the direction of the sun.
The bee returns to the hive in an excited state. It gives brought nectar to receiver bees and she performs particular movements on the comb, known as “recruiting dance”, which appeals to other bees of the colony to seek sources of nectar flow. If food is found near the apiary, and no further than 100 meters from the hive, the bee quickly runs around a honeycomb cell, and then turns around and makes a circle in the opposite direction. Running across the comb from one bee to another it repeats these movements for several seconds. This dance is called round dance.
When flowering plants are found at a distance of more than 100 meters from the hive, the bees that have brought nectar from them perform this dance differently. First, they make a semicircle along several cells, then they run straightly across 2-3 cells, wagging its abdomen from side to side, and then they make a second semicircle in the opposite direction. The nature of dance, as well as the number of oscillations of the abdomen in a straight run, depends on the degree of excitation of the forager bee and, consequently, the remoteness of the flowering plants from the hive.
The farther the food source, the less number of oscillations is made by the bee during the straight run when dancing, it performs the dance as if with greater fatigue. This dance, in contrast to the round dance, is called the waggle dance. Dancing bees communicate not only the distance to the source of food, but also the direction to fly to flowering plants. Degree of the dancer (scout) bee’s excitation is transmitted to the surrounding bees. This helps them to find the plants from which "the dancers" have come.
The bees that surround the "dancer", sniff it, run to the entrance and fly out in search of melliferous plants with the same scent, which has been presented by the dancer bee. After some time, the bee, which was the first to find this source of food, goes to the source again. After gathering the nectar to the stomach and returning to the hive the bees perform the same dance, so more and more worker bees not engaged in collecting nectar from other plants fly to the new source of food. As soon as the plants stop or short down yielding nectar, the bees attending them will stop dancing. It is the way of regulating the number of bees on the flowers of plants yielding nectar.
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