Uploaded November 2011 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Time lapse recording of young honeybees in competing thermal and social gradients. The false color overlay indicates the local temperature with yellow representing the bees' optimum temperature of 36 °C (96.8 °F). The optimum zone is located at the left side of the arena while a sub-optimum zone (32 °C, 89.6 °F) exists at the right side. A few bees confined in a cage serve as a seed for aggregations at the thermal sub-optimum zone. The cage at the left side is empty and serves as a control. While freely roaming bees would normally be expected to aggregate at the thermal optimum, the caged bees are a greater incentive than optimal temperature for them to aggregate. The freely roaming bees form a cluster around the bees caged in the thermal sub-optimum and mostly ignore the optimum. Therefore, the social gradient appears to overrule the thermal gradient in this experimental setup.
Time lapse recording of young honeybees in competing thermal and social gradients. The false color overlay indicates the local temperature with yellow representing the bees' optimum temperature of 36 °C (96.8 °F). The optimum zone is located at the left side of the arena while a sub-optimum zone (32 °C, 89.6 °F) exists at the right side. A few bees confined in a cage serve as a seed for aggregations at the thermal sub-optimum zone. The cage at the left side is empty and serves as a control. While freely roaming bees would normally be expected to aggregate at the thermal optimum, the caged bees are a greater incentive than optimal temperature for them to aggregate. The freely roaming bees form a cluster around the bees caged in the thermal sub-optimum and mostly ignore the optimum. Therefore, the social gradient appears to overrule the thermal gradient in this experimental setup.
