Evaluating the cues that coordinate a shift towards the robbing foraging tactic in the honey bee

Link to article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-023-03321-x

This is another paper that came from an undergrad project by a mentee of mine, Taylor Napier. Honey robbing is a phenomenon where, rather than forage for their own nectar, honey bee hives will instead invade another colony and steal its honey. These robbing events are highly violent and typically kill the victim hive. Previous research showed that returning robbers are policed more heavily by guards from their own colonies than returning nectar foragers, suggesting that the natal colony guards are picking up on some cue that these individuals have been participating in robbing (Grume et al. 2021). Our experiment tested what cues these guards might be honing in on. We found that it's unlikely that the guards are smelling that the "robbers" are returning with honey (instead of something like nectar or sugar water). Instead, it seems that the "robbers" that experience more intense competition at a robbing station are more likely to be policed by their guards. This result suggests that the robbers that experience high conflict may be behaving differently than normal foragers upon their return, and that this behavioral difference may provoke the increased policing by the guards.

Below: a) The simulated honey-robbing station in relation to the focal hive; b) high activity (and therefore intensive competition) at the feeder was associated with a higher level of policing by guards back at the hive; c) undergraduate first-author Taylor Napier (left) and then-graduate student Rebecca Westwick (right) perform activity counts and aggression surveys at the colony entrance (photo credits-Caroline Kane)

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