Changes in thermoregulatory fanning behavior over honeybee lifespan

Eusocial insects are some of the most successful organisms on the planet due to division of labor. Honeybees exhibit temporal division of labor where certain ages perform specific tasks. However, certain environmental cues may cause bees to perform behaviors outside of their current task group. One of these cues is increasing temperature. Honeybees thermoregulate their colony at 36C by fanning during hot summer months. Our research shows that worker bees exhibit different fanning rates in different behavioral tasks. Therefore, we are interested in how fanning behavior changes not only by behavioral caste, but also over specific ages of the bees. We conducted studies that looked at the expression of fanning behavior across multiple hives over the period of 30 days. This will provide insight into how fanning behavior changes over the lifetime of a worker bee, while helping us to understand division of labor in eusocial insect societies.