Consistency and individuality of honeybee stinging behaviour across time and social contexts

Abstract

Whether individuals exhibit consistent behavioural variation is a central question in the field of animal behaviour. This question is particularly interesting in the case of social animals, as their behaviour may be strongly modulated by the collective. In this study, we ask whether honeybees exhibit individual differences in stinging behaviour. We demonstrate that bees are relatively stable in their decision to sting – or not – in a specific context and show temporal consistency suggestive of an internal state modulation. We also investigated how social factors such as the alarm pheromone or another bee modulated this behaviour. The presence of alarm pheromone increased the likelihood of a bee to sting but this response decayed over trials, while the presence of a conspecific decreased individual stinging likelihood. These factors, however, did not alter stinging consistency. We therefore propose that social modulation acts by shifting the stinging threshold of individuals. Finally, experimental manipulation of group composition with respect to the ratio of aggressive and gentle bees within a group did not affect the behaviour of focal bees. Overall, our results establish honeybee stinging behaviour as a promising model for studying mechanistically how collective and individual traits interact to regulate individual variability.