Credit: Siefert et al, 2021, PLOS ONE (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Unique video from within beehives provides special insight into honey bee behaviors, according to a study published March 17, 2021 in the open-access journal
PLOS ONE by Paul Siefert from Goethe-Universität, Germany, and colleagues.
Though the European honey bee (Apis mellifera) famously lives in large and complex colonies, it s the collective behavior of the hive s unique individuals that determines the colony s success behaviors such as nest building, foraging, storing and ripening food, brood nursing, temperature regulation, hygiene, or hive defense. Most of these activities happen within the structure of the hive itself and aren t easily observable but in this study, Siefert and colleagues were able to video record individual honeycomb frames and even cells from within special glass-framed observation hives, providing new insights into honey bee behavior at the individual level.