The bees can say: For!

When a bee worker melífera (Apis mellifera) finds a food source, it returns to the beehive and realizes a dance to report of the meal availability and to recruit his partners.

In certain occasions, it is possible to observe how a bee strikes his head against the body of the one that realizes the dance and expresses a short buzz. At first, to this sign it was named a request call because one believed that these clicks were serving so that the struck bee was providing a meal sample to him to the beating bee, but no meal transfer was taking place. Also it was thought that it might have some relation with feeding areas sobreexplotadas, although the sign also was taking place in areas where there were no many bees.

For!. The bee that does the dance (in the center and with the yellow point in the thorax) stops when the bee marked with a S in the thorax gives him a click with the head.

The group of James C. Nieh, in the Section of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution of the Division of Biological Sciences of the University of California in San Diego, has demonstrated that in fact it is a sign of stop to warn that the pecoreo place is not suitable or is dangerous. The bees transmit the sign to partners who have visited the same meal source and are treating ―con his dance ― of recruiting other workers towards this place. The message that they transmit comes to mean Stops dancing and asking for reinforcements because that place is already not worth it and takes place when they worsen the conditions in which the bees look for meal, good because it remains small in the pecoreo place or because there are predators.

In a few experiments in which there were simulated attacks of chandeliers crab and of bees of other colonies, it was observed that the production of signs of stop was increasing between 43 and 88 times, being the negative answer (number of signs of stop) major when there was some type of physical aggression or the more dangerous the attack was.

The bee is the second species of social insect where a negative sign is observed. The case that had been studied in advance was that of the ant Pharaoh (Monomorium pharaonis), who uses a repellent pheromone to mark a way that it is not necessary to continue for being dangerous or lacking interest.

If we think to the social insects how a superorganism where the division of labor is specializing and where every individual of the group acts cooperatively and is unable to survive isolated during long periods of time, the positive and negative signs remember, in certain way, to that they express the cells to communicate between themselves.

To Negative Feedback Signal That Is Triggered by Peril Curbs Honey Bee Recruitment James C. Nieh. 2010. Cur. Biol. 20 (4), pp. 310-315. Nieh, J. (2010). To Negative Feedback Signal That Is Triggered by Peril Curbs Honey Bee Recruitment Current Biology, 20 (4), 310-315 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.12.060