There is a lot more associated with the honeybees than just being the official pollinators on Planet Earth. Researchers from multiple leading institutions have found that they have behavioural maturity. The method in which the labour is divided among them is also based upon their age.
In a recent study titled ‘Variation in Behavioural Maturation in Tropical Honey Bees Corresponds with Hormonal and Molecular Differences’, experts explained how division of labour is based on a process of behavioural development in which the worker bee successively performs different tasks at different ages. Workers start with tasks within the nest and move on to become foragers.
The study was undertaken by researchers from Centre for Wildlife Studies (CWS), National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Department of Biology in the University of Kassel in Germany and Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour in University of Liverpool in United Kingdom.
In the study, published in the journal of Experimental Biology, the scientists compared behavioural maturation in two tropical Asian honeybee species — the open-nesting Apis florea and the cavity-nesting Apis cerana. They examined how workers transition from nest tasks to foraging. They noted that workers of A. cerana showed a faster and more uniform pace of behavioural maturation compared to the A. florea, suggesting that accelerated development is a derived trait linked to cavity-nesting behaviour.
In both species, hormones and chemical signals that prompted the worker bees to begin foraging broadly mirrored patterns that have been seen in the European honeybee Apis mellifera, suggesting these mechanisms are conserved across honeybee species.
“However, a key protein linked to nursing behaviour and the molecular signals associated with it did not show the same clear age or task-related patterns seen in A. mellifera, pointing to important differences between tropical and temperate honeybee lineages. A. florea workers consistently showed substantially higher vitellogenin expression than A. cerana workers, a striking finding whose biological function is yet to be understood,” they noted in the study.
Dr Sruthi Unnikrishnan, lead author of the study, from Centre for Wildlife Studies, said, “Even closely-related honeybee species do not all organise their societies in the same way. We found that tropical Asian honeybees follow familiar biological rules in some respects, but also show surprising differences that remind us how much there is still to learn.”
Dr Axel Brockmann from NCBS, a co-author said, “Asian honeybee research is crucial for India’s food systems and biodiversity because these species pollinate many crops and wild plants, while comparative studies also offer global insights into how honeybees may respond to future climate change.”