Personalities and behavioral syndromes: Sub-caste variation in honey bee behavior

Much remains to be known about how individuals within a social insect caste differ from each other.  Sub-caste behavioral differences may be organized as personalities or behavioral syndromes, correlated suites of behaviors and behavioral consistencies across contexts and over time.  We investigated these elements of personality in honey bee workers by observing what tasks they perform throughout their lives in an observation hive, and tested whether groups of tasks were correlated with each other.  Additionally, we observed how honey bee workers behave when presented with different types of stimuli (queen pheromone, alarm pheromone, and a bee from a different colony), and tested whether behaved consistently across these different contexts, and consistently over their lifespan.  Workers did not perform behaviors consistently over time, but we found evidence that they are consistent across contexts and that particular behaviors are associated with other behaviors. Thus, we demonstrated behavioral variation within honey bee temporal castes consistent with behavioral syndromes.  Sub-caste behavioral variation may contribute to the division of labor in the honey bee colony and to the success of their highly organized societies.