Honey bee workers perform vibration signals on swarms throughout the house-hunting process. The signals play an important role in stimulating swarm liftoff and movement to a new nest site, but their role in nest-site selection is unclear. To assess the function of the signal during nest-site selction, we conducted "removal experiments", in which we removed all vibrating bees form Test swarms and then compared their waggle dance behavior to control swarms from which randomly selcted, non-vibrating bees were removed. Waggle dances were decoded to estimate for each swarm the number of nest sites scouted for, the distribution of recruits among sites and the area of the environment searched for new nest cavities. Test and control swarms exhibited few differences in the variables examined. Thus, while the vibration signal is performed throughout nest-site selection, the process is not substantially altered by diminished signal activity. The importance of the vibration signal in nest-site selection therefore remains unknown.
Species 1: Hymenoptera Apidae Apis mellifera (honey bee)
Keywords: swarming, behavior
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