Abstract
A honeybee colony has to work highly efficient to survive. Most of a honeybee’s energetic demands are satisfied by consuming carbohydrates which are collected by forager bees in form of nectar from flowering plants. The storage of this nectar is performed by another specialised group of bees. The size of the two workgroups (foragers and receivers) are precisely regulated by dances performed by forager bees, a process that represents adaptive behaviour of a superorganism. We implemented these mechanisms in a simulation of a honeybee colony to investigate the possible advantages of bigger colonies in nectar foraging.
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Thenius, R., Schmickl, T., Crailsheim, K. (2006). Economic Optimisation in Honeybees: Adaptive Behaviour of a Superorganism. In: Nolfi, S., et al. From Animals to Animats 9. SAB 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4095. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11840541_60
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11840541_60
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-38608-7
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