Nesting sites of giant honeybees modulated by landscape patterns

Stereoscopic Motion Analysis of Giant Honeybees

Giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) nests display a series of layers of colony members around a single comb and may have more than 1.5 m in horizontal span. Nesting in the open, they have evolved a variety of defence strategies. Against predatory wasps, they produce highly coordinated wave-like cascades termed ‘shimmering’, whereby a collective of hundreds of bees flip their abdomens upwards simulta...

Social Waves in Giant Honeybees Repel Hornets

Giant honeybees (Apis dorsata) nest in the open and have evolved a plethora of defence behaviors. Against predatory wasps, including hornets, they display highly coordinated Mexican wave-like cascades termed 'shimmering'. Shimmering starts at distinct spots on the nest surface and then spreads across the nest within a split second whereby hundreds of individual bees flip their abdomens upwards....

Contrasting foraging patterns for Africanized honeybees, native bees and native wasps in a tropical agroforestry landscape

Ecological and temporal factors can influence animal foraging patterns and may obscure our understanding of how native and exotic species interact. To understand how such factors affect foraging, the visitation of native and exotic bees and wasps was observed at nectar feeders within Mexican agroforestry systems, while documenting (1) vegetation management (low-shade vs. high-shade coffee), (2)...

Bees: Their Nests and Nesting Sites

Honeybees Learn Landscape Features during Exploratory Orientation Flights

Exploration is an elementary and fundamental form of learning about the structure of the world [1-3]. Little is known about what exactly is learned when an animal seeks to become familiar with the environment. Navigating animals explore the environment for safe return to an important place (e.g., a nest site) and to travel between places [4]. Flying central-place foragers like honeybees (Apis m...