Worker honeybees, Apis mellifera, police each other's reproduction by killing worker-laid eggs. Previous experiments demonstrated that worker policing is effective, killing most (∼98%) worker-laid eggs. However, many queen-laid eggs were also killed (∼50%) suggesting that effective policing may have high costs. In these previous experiments, eggs were transferred using forceps into test cells, ...

Using the results of an optical analysis, a digital computer technique was developed to analyze the relative excitation produced by arbitrary figures at the rhabdom of the receptors of a compound eye. This technique was applied to several sets of figures for the honeybee (Apis mellifera) and a reasonable agreement was found with behavioral data. Similarly, the significance of a fixed cutoff ang...

Previous experiments with honeybees (Apis mellifera) failed to show learned control of performance by short-ten memory. In this study, honeybees were trained with an improved technique to choose 1 of 2 colors that was either the same as a recently rewarded sample (perseveration) or different (alteration). Because any increase in associative strength stemming from the sample experience would ten...

A density-dependent Markov process model is constructed for information transfer among scouts during nest-site selection by honeybees (Apis mellifera). The effects of site quality, competition between sites and delays in site discovery are investigated. The model predicts that bees choose the better of two sites more reliably when both sites are of low quality than when both sites are of high q...

Honeybees, Apis spp., maintain elevated temperatures inside their nests to accelerate brood development and to facilitate defense against predators. We present an additional defensive function of elevating nest temperature: honeybees generate a broodcomb fever in response to colonial infection by the heat-sensitive pathogen Ascosphaera apis. This response occurs before larvae are killed, sugges...

Spatial working memory (the ability to represent multiple locations in a flexible, dynamic manner) has been studied in a range of vertebrate species. The results of 3 experiments indicate that this ability also exists in at least one invertebrate (honeybees; Apis mellifera). Individual honeybees collected sugar solution from a matrix of 6 locations. They avoided revisits to locations previously...

Animals do not always perform to the best of their abilities when faced with difficult choices. New findings on foraging honeybees show that co-existing strategies, where some individuals place more emphasis on accuracy and others on speed, can be advantageous to the colony in a variable environment.

Spiroplasma apis B31(T) (ATCC 33834) is a wall-less bacterium in the class Mollicutes that has been linked to May disease of honeybees (Apis mellifera). Here, we report the complete genome sequence of this bacterium to facilitate the investigation of its virulence factors.