Analysing honeybees' division of labour in broodcare by a multi-agent model

We describe a multi-agent model of a honeybee colony and show several applications of the model that simulate experiments that have been performed with real honeybees. Our special emphasis was on the decentralized, self-organized regulation of brood nursing, which we successfully simulated: We found that brood manipulations, food-deprivation experiments and colony-size manipulations can be explained by the mechanisms we implemented into our model described here. Our agents can perform various tasks (foraging, storing, nursing). The model is spatially resolved, and contains a designated broodnest area as well as a designated honey/nectar storage area. All bees (and larvae) consume nectar/honey at a task-specific rate, allowing us to track the flow of nectar through the colony. Several kinds of stimuli, which are important for division of labour, were modelled in detail: dances, contact stimuli and chemical signals.