How Does a Bee Detect Her Colony Size by Michael Smith

A lecture given by Michael Smith at the 2018 National Honey Show entitled "How Does a Bee Detect Her Colony Size?" Sponsored by Surrey Beekeepers Association. The National Honey Show also gratefully acknowledge the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers for their support.
Michael Smith is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Collective Behaviour at the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology/University of Konstanz. His research focuses on movement patterns in honey bee colonies, and how individual bees detect the developmental state of their group. Michael first began beekeeping in 2005, while attending The United World College of the Atlantic, in St. Donats, Wales. He continued beekeeping during his undergraduate degree at Princeton, while also conducting honey bee research at Wellesley College with Heather Mattila. In 2017, Michael completed his PhD in Tom Seeley’s lab at Cornell University, where he studied growth, development, and reproductive investments in honey bee colonies.

[@markos1661]

Finally new lectures! We have been waiting for too long! Thank you!

[@engineerwv]

Right, I’ve been on my 25th rerun cycle! 😆

[@adamkean7134]

Awesome, Great presentation. looking forward to more content,

[@Pustustuparul]

Thank you

[@badassbees3680]

POLLEN is the Drone Comb Alert--I think,once the bees are far enough along in their spring build up, the pollens coming in with nectar sounds the alarm, I also believe that the Equinox and length of the day is a factor ..

[@jozsip]

How about resources coming in the hive, nectar/pollen quantity and quality, would that make any difference? Because it depends on the time of the year and the foraging area. Thank you for the good speech.

[@DeepPastry]

Maybe it's just just contact amount, like rubbing, and rubbing is racing... I mean, rubbing is the cue grasshoppers use to go locust on the world. So I'll go with that mechanism would also be useful for social insects as well.

[@baconneggs2406]

Maybe the amount of workers only effects how fast things get done and they will invest whatever space is available for reproduction because they want a certain size brood nest and certain amount of stores. I think everything revolves around available space in the cavity vs how fast the bees can build. Maybe they spend more time measuring

[@rustyshackleford5762]

Higher density would probably increase the air pressure inside a hive, yeah? I suspect bees can sense pressure changes. That may be one of their cues to build more drone comb. I suggested it to him when he presented this at a previous conference.

[@coptotermes]

Air pressure inside the hive will not increase with the number of bees. Inside the hive and outside the hive are connected, the pressure will be the same.

[@TheSoilandGreen]

Something missed with this machine, it will be found with a difference in time of year. Do it again in March/April . You will see an increase in production due to moving the air around. This will cause nectar to evaporate faster and give bees more time to draw out comb

[@TheBaconWizard]

But don't the bees detect some of the pheromones via touch (of antennae) so it could be non-volatile pheromones.

[@julieenslow5915]

Not wanting to throw in a monkey wrench here - but I see no mention of the queen in this. Is there any way a queen might influence when and how much drone cone is made? I'm thinking of a plastic frame or a frame with a full piece of wax as a foundation for comb. I have seen queens go on a new frame as they are just about to draw the comb, and she has put down eggs. Its like a demand - here are eggs. Build me comb NOW. She can determine what kind of eggs she lays - so could she be doing that to force the building of drone comb? You see that in inspections: plastic frames, side walls of cells are barely discernable, and if you look closely you cant miss that there are enough eggs laid there to fill the frame from bottom to 1/4 of the distance from the top - and about that side to side. And you know those workers are hustling to have cells fully formed before they have to cap them!
Related question: do the workers then come in - if the queen's laying is not on the correct interval to fit in the worker or drone comb (depending on what kind of egg she has laid) do the bees pull comb and move the eggs into the cells as soon as they start pulling the sides up. Or is the queen able to get the interval correct so its just a road map?

[@andrewrae6755]

Also the Queen gives off different pheromones, depending upon, the time of year and the Queen's fertility and need to lay more eggs after wintering. All animals have a time for sexual activity and maybe queens coming out of winter tend to lay unfertilised eggs, making drones and they will do this sooner if densely populated with higher cluster temperatures. There is a shared period with all neighbouring hives to cross fertilise queens which WILL go out every year to re-mate and increase the gene pool. Maybe he should use Bumble Bees or Wasps to experiment this phenomena as they start out with one individual Queen yet share a common ancestry wherein may lie the reason for having different size combs & bee gender bodies. All seems a bit of a pointless exercise anyway.

[@julieenslow5915]

@Andrew Rae
I had never heard that queen honeybees go out annually to mate again. I would love more information on that, or to know if someone can confirm or deny that one?
But I am really curious about your comment "All seems a bit of a poiontless exercise anyway." Could you explain what you are talking about and why you think it pointless?
Thank you.

[@toddachten2224]

@@andrewrae6755 HORSE CRAP!!!!!!! Queen honey bees do NOT go out every year to remate!!!!!

[@andrewrae6755]

@@toddachten2224 You can prove that, can you ?

[@toddachten2224]

@@andrewrae6755 There is ABSOLUTELY ZERO "0" provable research that you can present that says otherwise!!!

[@QueOraSi]

There was one thing he overlooked and that is humidity. In the spring we feed 1:1 syrup to stimulate brood rearing because it mimics a nectar flow by increasing humidity in the hive. Humidity is also affected by temperature, bee density, etc. It is the one signal detected by all bees all the time, queen included. As for the stop building signal, it could simply be the drone exodus that happens every afternoon during summer. Less bees, less respiration, less humidity.

[@QueOraSi]

@@tonyrobinson1573 Humidity plays a major role in hive dynamics and it makes me wonder why he didn't consider it. A fellow by the name of Henry J. Pirker wrote an article in the American Bee Journal Dec. 1978 called "Steering Factor Humidity". It's an interesting read.