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Searching Behaviour and Direction Finding of Differently Motivated Displaced Honeybees—an ‘Etho‐psychological’ Study of Release Behaviour
Author(s) -
Schöne Hermann,
Westermayr Philipp,
Kühme Dietrich,
Kühme Lisa,
Schöne Monika,
Schöne Renate
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
ethology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.739
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1439-0310
pISSN - 0179-1613
DOI - 10.1111/j.1439-0310.1998.tb00051.x
Subject(s) - sight , bearing (navigation) , compass , sky , psychology , honey bees , social psychology , communication , ecology , artificial intelligence , geography , physics , computer science , biology , optics , cartography , astrophysics
Bees were captured as they left from or arrived at a feeding place (F), or took off from the hive (H) (leave‐F, arrive‐F, and leave‐H, respectively). They were displaced and released (one or more times) at initially unfamiliar sites. In some tests, sight conditions prior to release were restricted. Searching behaviour performed prior to leaving the release site was recorded as well as the final vanishing bearing (VB). The VBs obtained are distributed in one or more clusters, depending on the type of experiment. As a rule, one of the peaks coincides with the compass bearing that bees would have selected had they not been displaced. Another peak is in accordance with a ‘fleeing’ course in the direction of the hive, probably initiated by the stress situation caused by the experimental manipulations. Prior to selecting the final course, leave‐H bees searched longer than did leave‐F or arrive‐F bees, first‐time flyers searched longer than repeaters and bees limited to sky‐vision searched longer than bees with free sight. There is a significant positive correlation between searching behaviour and scatter of vanishing bearings. Function and origins of the searching behaviour, as well as the effects of sight conditions and of repeated releases, are discussed.