Remarkable Sensitivity of Young Honey Bee Workers to Multiple Non-photic, Non-thermal, Forager Cues That Synchronize Their Daily Activity Rhythms.

Honey bees live in colonies containing tens of thousands of workers that coordinate their activities to produce efficient colony-level behavior. In free-foraging colonies, nest bees are entrained to the forager daily phase of activity even when experiencing conflicting light-dark illumination regime, but little is known on the cues mediating this potent social synchronization. We monitored locomotor activity in an array of individually caged bees in which we manipulated the contact with neighbour bees.

Social synchronization of circadian rhythms with a focus on honeybees.

Many animals benefit from synchronizing their daily activities with conspecifics. In this hybrid paper, we first review recent literature supporting and extending earlier evidence for a lack of clear relationship between the level of sociality and social entrainment of circadian rhythms. Social entrainment is specifically potent in social animals that live in constant environments in which some or all individuals do not experience the ambient day-night cycles.

Colony Volatiles and Substrate-borne Vibrations Entrain Circadian Rhythms and Are Potential Cues Mediating Social Synchronization in Honey Bee Colonies.

Internal circadian clocks organize animal behavior and physiology and are entrained by ecologically relevant external time-givers such as light and temperature cycles. In the highly social honey bee, social time-givers are potent and can override photic entrainment, but the cues mediating social entrainment are unknown. Here, we tested whether substrate-borne vibrations and hive volatiles can mediate social synchronization in honey bees.

Octopamine Underlies the Counter-Regulatory Response to a Glucose Deficit in Honeybees ().

An animal's internal state is a critical parameter required for adaptation to a given environment. An important aspect of an animal's internal state is the energy state that is adjusted to the needs of an animal by energy homeostasis. Glucose is one essential source of energy, especially for the brain.