We report that the cells in a natural honeybee comb have a circular shape at 'birth' but quickly transform into the familiar rounded hexagonal shape, while the comb is being built. The mechanism for this transformation is the flow of molten visco-elastic wax near the triple junction between the neighbouring circular cells. The flow may be unconstrained or constrained by the unmolten wax away fr...

Mechanistic models of animal signals posit the occurrence of biases on the part of receivers that could be potentially exploited by signallers. Such biases are most obvious when animals are confronted with exaggerated versions of signals they normally encounter. Signalling systems operating in plant-pollinator interactions are among the most highly coevolved, with plants using a variety of flor...

A system of partial differential equations is derived as a model for the dynamics of a honey bee colony with a continuous age distribution, and the system is then extended to include the effects of a simplified infectious disease. In the disease-free case, we analytically derive the equilibrium age distribution within the colony and propose a novel approach for determining the global asymptotic...

A honey bee queen mates with a number of drones a few days after she emerges as an adult. Spermatozoa of different drones are stored in her spermatheca and used for the rest of the queen's life to fertilize eggs. Sperm usage is thought to be random, so that the patriline distribution within a honey bee colony would remain constant over time. In this study we assigned the progeny of a naturally ...

The ability of honeybees to gauge the distances of short flights was investigated under controlled laboratory conditions where a variety of potential odometric cues such as flight duration, energy consumption, image motion, airspeed, inertial navigation and landmarks were manipulated. Our findings indicate that honeybees can indeed measure short distances travelled and that they do so solely by...

We investigated the ability of honeybees to learn mazes of four types: constant-turn mazes, in which the appropriate turn is always in the same direction in each decision chamber; zig-zag mazes, in which the appropriate turn is alternately left and right in successive decision chambers; irregular mazes, in which there is no readily apparent pattern to the turns; and variable irregular mazes, in...

Variation in behaviour among group members often impacts collective outcomes. Individuals may vary both in the task that they perform and in the persistence with which they perform each task. Although both the distribution of individuals among tasks and differences among individuals in behavioural persistence can each impact collective behaviour, we do not know if and how they jointly affect co...

Amidst ongoing declines in honey bee health, the contributory role of the newer systemic insecticides continues to be intensely debated. Scores of toxicological field experiments, which bee scientists and regulators in the United States have looked to for definitive causal evidence, indicate a lack of support. This paper analyzes the methodological norms that shape the design and interpretation...

Present studies were conducted at local litchi orchards in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, from flowering (March) to harvesting (May) of litchi, during 2023. To understand the impact wild pollinators and Apis mellifera on pollination fruit setting different experimental treatment used quantify qualitative quantitative characters litchi. Decline density female flower mature with some variation all treatment...