Science Communication Presentation - Bee

Behaviour of Honeybees

Luli Shaw

Open Ended

What do you think honeybees do?

Pollination is the fertilisation of a plant, allowing it to form seeds and sometimes fruit.

Bees carry pollen from flower to flower.

In return, bees receive nectar as food high in sugar.

The Experiment

- Testing honeybees behaviour after disruption

- 2 Groups of Bees

- Compare the results

Open Ended

By shaking bees, what kind of behaviour would you expect them to show?

Once they had been shaken, scientists compared the different groups of bees

• Unshaken bees continued with their normal behaviours

• Shaken bees were more cautious and did not extend their mouthparts to potentially harmful stimulants

Open Ended

Why do you think the shaken group of bees were more cautious than the other, unshaken group?

Why did the shaken bees respond like that?

• Shaking resulted in a decrease in levels of dopamine and serotonin hormones

Hormones control our emotions

So what?

• Honeybees can make decisions about familiar stimuli based on their surroundings

• Hormone levels change with the change of state

• Now kangaroos have been shown to be able to ‘communicate’ too