Dispersal Behavior of Honey Bee Swarms

Food shortages were probably a major ecological force upon the European races of honey bees (Apis mellifera) in their natural habitat of temperate deciduous forest. And many features of honey bee biology are reasonably interpreted as techniques of competition for food. For example, the demographic properties of descendant honey bee colonies in North America, such as low reproductive rate and infrequent but expensive offspring, probably reflect selection for competitive ability rather than productivity (Seeley 1978). Also the honey bee’s sophisticated recruitment system involving dance language and olfactory recruitment (von Frisch 1967, Gould 1975) seems ideal for a "scramble" type competitive device involving rapid discovery and exploitation of food sources. Furthermore bees from different colonies will fight at feeding dishes when the food is in short supply (Kalmus 1941) and will reduce each others’ foraging range (Levin 1961, Levin and Glowska-Konopacka 1963, Gary et al. 1972, 1973, 1975). Thus honey bee colonies can apparently also compete for food sources using techniques of "contest" competition.