Biology of Conflict in Honey-Bee Colonies

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Interactions within animal societies are a complex mix of cooperation and conflict. This study will examine how the individuals in the honey-bee colony, a society exhibiting an extreme degree of cooperation, are nonetheless in conflict during certain of the colony's activities. The study focuses on the point of greatest conflict in honey-bee social life: the division of the colony between queens during swarming. It is among the first in hundreds of years of observations on bees to describe the behaviors of individual bees during swarming and afterswarming. Of special interest in this study is an understanding of how the bees decide which queens leave with swarms and how many swarms (queens) are produced, and how these decisions, resulting large-scale, colony-wide events, are built up from the behavior of individuals. This research will contribute to the general theory of social behavior by testing predictions of current evolutionary theory within a colony of advanced social insects. It will add to understanding of the way in which evolution shapes animal communication, and it will broaden our view of the nature of the societies of the advanced social insects by showing how, because they are genetically distinct, individuals within these societies may sharply conflict, although they so often cooperate. In addition, the control of swarming in honey bees remains one of the unsolved problems in practical management of honey bees for honey production and pollination of food crops. This research into the surprisingly little-studied social biology of swarming may thus have practical implications for the beekeeping industry and agriculture.