THE VIBRATION DANCE OF THE HONEY BEE, APIS MELLIFERA: COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATED WITH THE REGULATION OF FORAGING ACTIVITY (RECRUITMENT, FEEDBACK, NOISE)

The vibration dance of the honey bee was found to regulate foraging behavior by increasing the probability that foraging age bees contact those stimuli which promote food collection. Nonforaging age bees did not respond to the dance.;When the opportunity for colonies to collect food was manipulated, successful foraging was found to cause major and minor vibration peaks. Major peaks were caused by 3-4 days of successful food collection. These peaks appeared to adjust foraging activity relative to sustained trends in resource availability. In contrast, minor peaks occurred in response to immediate increases in foraging. Thus, vibration dance activity may represent a two-level feedback system which allows colonies to "monitor" and respond to foraging conditions on long- and short-term bases.;Since the vibration dance is associated with foraging, there would seem to be an advantage for vibrators to vibrate workers of foraging age. Observations of a worker population of known age documented that vibrators vibrated bees of foraging age and bees younger than themselves. However, there was considerable variability in (1) the degree to which individual vibrators made these discriminations and (2) the age group that was vibrated most often. Such variability may facilitate efficient regulation of foraging, given the inherent variability in the physiological and chronological age of foragers and the large number of age related activities associated with foraging.;The regulatory influence of the vibration dance appeared to operate on two separate time scales. Large, morning peaks of vibration activity ("major" vibration peaks) which preceded foraging appeared to exert a long-term, "tonic" influence which determined the overall level of foraging activity occurring later in the day. In contrast, smaller ("minor") vibration peaks, which occurred in the afternoon and coincided with sudden increases in foraging activity, may have provided a short-term regulation of forager recruitment.