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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: Bee Behaviors
« Last post by Terri Yaki on Today at 03:29:01 pm »Quote
I've never heard of this. Could you describe it a little more?
The hive was open and on top of one of the frames there was one bee going around nudging on other bees. According to him, that was a 'get to work' nudge. It was kind of a push from the side and maybe a little wing action but not much. Logically, it coincides with the scouts that I've observed going out early to see if conditions were good enough for work.
Bees will clean each other, which can look kind of aggressive sometimes. They will set up fanning lines to move air from deep in the nest to the entrance. If you ever use any foundationless frames, you'll see bees festooning, where they make a bee chain out of their bodies to build comb. If you are really focused on communication-based behaviors, there are bees who will walk around and buzz other bees on the back to alert them to the fact that the colony is getting ready to swarm. Bees who return from foraging trips are not only dancing about what they found, but also handing out samples. And of course bees are constantly switching up the tasks they are performing based on their age and the current needs of the colony. I mean, every single task the bees are performing could be considered a behavior really, so the list is basically endless! Dr. Seeley's work is something you could check out for more information on bee behavior. Honeybee Democracy of course deals with everything swarming-related, but The Lives of Bees talks about the natural behaviors of colonies in many different situations. 
The only thing that's not entirely accurate from the video is that the speech was originally supposed to last around 90 minutes, but Teddy explained to the crowd that he had been shot, so he probably wasn't going to get through the whole thing, but he was going to try his best. And he spoke for around 50 minutes before closing out the speech and then receiving medical attention. He reasoned, correctly, that if he wasn't coughing up blood, then the bullet hadn't hit his lungs, and so he figured that as long as he didn't bleed too much, he was okay to deliver the speech. 