[Bonus] Short: Communication in Bees and Beekeepers with Dr. Dewey Caron

[Bonus] Short - Communication in Bees and Beekeepers with Dr. Dewey Caron

[music]

Jeff Ott: Welcome to Beekeeping Today podcast shorts, your quick dive into the latest buzz in beekeeping.

Becky Masterman: In 20 minutes or less, we'll bring you one important story, keeping you informed and up-to-date.

Jeff: No fluff, no fillers, just the news you need.

Becky: Brought to you by Betterbee, your partners in better beekeeping.

Dr. Dewey Caron: Hi, I'm Dr. Dewey Caron. I come to you from Portland, Oregon. Following the Oregon State Beekeeper's annual meeting. I present another audio postcard on communication in my continuing series of once-monthly Beekeeping Today short podcast. Topic this month, November, is communication. For these audio postcards, I have been discussing communication on three levels, bee scientist to beekeeper, beekeeper to bee, and bee to bee. I'll deviate a bit on this one this time. I want to start with a discussion of communication.

One of the distinctions we humans have sought to differentiate us as humans from all other organisms has been that we have a language and thus superior communication as a social organism. However, as we have studied other organisms that are social, animals like elephants, prairie dogs, wolves, whales, dolphins, bats, several birds like crows and jays' distinction that we have of superior communication differentiate from other animals has been challenged. In fact, honeybees were one of the early animals to have that their communication of passing specific information on finding food, new home sites called a language, our familiar dance language.

A recent feature article talked to me from New Scientist of the August issue, states that the human communication system "consists of a vocabulary of words and the grammatical rules for making them. It uses sounds learned from others, rather than being innate that are divided into semantic categories, such as nouns and verbs, which change to describe what happened in the past or will occur in the future. It also has a syntax that governs how the words are organized into sentences. All this allows us to create new words and combine them to make sentences that have never existed before.

We can even discuss hypothetical things outside of our own space and time, such as absent people and distinct topics." Two, as a mouthful. As humans, we go to great lengths to try to differentiate our language communication as being distinct of communication in other animals. The words "language" and "communication" are often used interchangeably. However, a proper distinction is that language can be thought of as a system, communication as a process. While human societies might largely depend upon verbal language, there are other modalities of communication.

While humans use language to provide meaning, we also communicate in other ways as well. Communication in the largest sense is an exchanging of information through different means, such as language and symbols and sign language, eye and body language. Effective communication usually involves several means to deliver a message. Here are some categories of communication from the language doctors. I have that reference at the end. Verbal communication, and this type of communication people use spoken or signal language to convey messages.

The speaker can speak or sign the words that carry the information they want to pass along. I wonder how we're about verbal communication of younger humans. I don't always feel like we are communicating with the same language. Nonverbal communication is communication without use of words or language to communicate, body language, eye contact, and other cues are used to express ourselves. Most people communicate using these cues. Actually, research has shown that nonverbal communication can account for 93% of all communication.

I thought that number was high, but that's at least one research is showing. Then third, written communication. While humans started speaking around 50,000 years ago, writing systems were not developed until about 5,000 years ago. Humans frequently use writing, whether on paper or use of electronic devices, to communicate. Maybe we'll lose this communication to AI. A statement I read recently in New Yorker, the September 25 issue, as the technology advances, people are losing the ability to perform certain tasks, referring to AI without its assistance. It even has a name. It's called desk killing. Desk killing, never heard that one before.

Finally, for visual communication. For visual communication, humans use their eyes to decode a message. Visual symbols used to encode messages include signage, things like traffic lights, symbols, lot of them. It's like nonverbal communication with focus on visuals, very visually oriented. Before we developed our current structured language capabilities, humans still had the ability to communicate. Think of basic things like danger and affection. Human babies communicate before they develop language. Humans who speak a different language communicate. We might not understand their language, but we can still communicate.

Communication does not need to rely on language to be effective. When both parties understand each other, communication has occurred. Both human vocal language and written language were upgrades to a system already in place. The two are intertwined and rely on each other to convey meaning. Communication is broader than language because it encompasses everything to pass along messages. When you listen to a speaker at a bee meeting, think about how he or she is communicating beyond just those words. Podcasts and Zoom meetings are less rich in communications. They reduce communication between speaker and audience, mainly to the spoken word.

As I speak to you, you are picking up other communication clues in my language, how I speak, my emphasis on certain words, and other aspects of my speech pattern. No two communicators are necessarily going to be exactly the same in that verbal communication. Now, onto our favorite organism after ourselves, the honeybee. As stated earlier, we label honeybee scout forager behavior used to recruit additional sisters to locations of food or home sites as dance language. Scout bees are able to provide specific information based on the sun's position and energy expenditure to communicate to sister bees where and how far they might need to fly to find a floral source.

They can, in addition to supplying direction and distance information, communicate additional information such as richness of the source, how good it is to go there, smell, and taste, all from that same source. Scouts used several means to recruit new foragers. Sound emission is distinct, as is their dance behavior. Of course that communication use, smell, and taste are involved as well, because the honeybees can't simply point in a direction they use. Abstract transformation of information is what is needed. Like humans' use of alphabet as abstract meaning, other social animals use sound too, such as elephants, prairie dogs, and especially whales and dolphins.

They may not have nouns or verbs or syntax, but they too use verbal communication to inform other members of their society for the beekeeper-to-bee and bee-to-bee communication, and this Beekeeping Today short, I wish to concentrate on communication and swarming behavior. Dance language is a critical communication means also used in swarming behavior. Dancing is used to inform the bees of the sworn bivouac's specific location and specific information about potential nest sites. Scouts come to a consensus where several sites are discovered and move en masse onto the best cavity they have found.

A type of dance squeals off as labeled initially by Martin Lindauer or Boisterous Buzz-Running by Tom Seeley. This chapter 7 of his book, Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Running, signals those to bees to leave home to then cluster at the bivouac site and then to proceed from the bivouac site onto the new home site. Storming remains one of the challenges in beekeepers' understanding communication of their bees. We do not understand how bees are communicating to each other when they start the process of swarming. Unfortunately, we are only capable of discovering what our bees already know.

We clue into their communication of preparing a swarm after they are well into their preparations to reproduce the society. Swarming represents not individual reproduction, but the society. Clearly, bees have many communication aspects. Beekeepers also have several aspects to communicate to our bees, especially when we are seeking to change their behavior. The earlier we understand our bees, the more we can communicate with them to change. Some of the several communication factors involved in swarming include the major modality of how honey bees communicate via chemicals.

Queen pheromone insufficiency or insufficient distribution of her pheromone. The congestion of the brood rearing area is usually identified as a major communication between the bees, but the rearing of drone brood, floral abundance, rapid colony growth, and environmental conditions also figure into starting and continuing, especially continuing their preparations to divide. Workers start keeping more food in the honey stomach. These are colony correlates and at least partial triggers of swarming.

The bee scientist, the beekeeper communication comes as a new study from the University of Minnesota published in Scientific Reports. This is referenced in endnotes. Two of the individuals have moved on to the USDA in Baton Rouge. It is referenced as I indicated in the endnotes. Their research offers up yet another communication modality as bees prepare to swarm from their homes. The Minnesota investigation asked if vitellogenin, a phospholipoglycoprotein, that's a mouthful, could be part of the language of swarming preparations.

Vitellogenin is a nutrient reserve for wintering, which is the primary storage protein critical to fat and fall bees enrichment, allows extending worker bees' lives for winter. The bees that are sometimes labeled as diutinus bees could-- as the question that the research was asked, could vitellogenin retention be part of the language of bees and swarming preparations? Honeybee queens have high levels of vitellogenin, which then supports their egg production, nurse-age bees do as well.

The workers need vitellogenin to produce brood food to feed to young larvae. Normally, vitellogenin decreases in the middle-aged bees as a transition from nurse bees to foragers. The levels of juvenile hormone are an endocrine factor also then increases as the vitellogenin levels decrease. The researchers postulated that bees that swarm would benefit from a buildup of internal energy stores like that seen in the winter bees. The investigation sampled vitellogenin and gene expression over two years through assaying levels in various bee castes at various intervals, including before swarming and colonies that swarmed and then others that did not swarm.

Vitellogenin levels were high in 10 to 14-day-old bees in colonies 3 days before swarming. Normally, it would not be that high, and it lasted up to 24 hours after swarming. Buildup of vitellogenin was not evident in bees that did not swarm. We should add another possible communication chemical in bees preparing to swarm. Now, research will need to determine how this need is communicated among the bees and whether it is, in fact, part of the language to prepare to swarm. Understanding that might also help provide beekeepers with a signal we can use as we seek to manage swarming behavior.

We need to be better understanding of our bees' preparations to swarm. Communication is a two-way street. We need to understand what they're saying and better refine what we are asking of them. Thanks for listening. Until next time, be well.

[music]

[00:13:49] [END OF AUDIO]