Apiculture

Introduction

Among different insect orders, only 8 have been recognized by insect taxonomists which have some communal life. Out of these 8 orders only two orders viz. Isoptera and Hymenoptera have well developed social organization. Even in Hymenoptera, only two families namely Halictidae and Apidae of superfamily Apoidea contain fully social species. Most of other bees live solitary life.
Social behaviour
Honey bees are among the fully social insects having overlap of many generations in the same nest. The colony is a well organized social group having division of labour in terms of laying of eggs, nursing, comb building, guarding, food collection and its storage. They have well developed communication system through different types of dances as well as trophallaxis.
Biological communication can be defined as an action on the part of one organism that alters the probability pattern of behavior in another organism in an adaptive fashion. Adaptive means that the signaling or the response or both which have been genetically programmed to some extent by natural selection.
Trophallaxis is food transmission (exchange of food) which is common between workers and also from workers to queen and drones. It is a sort of communication regarding availability of food and water and also a medium for transfer of pheromone.
In honey bees, recruit communication is very important mode of communication which is defined as a communication that brings nest mates to some point in space where work is required. Dances of honey bees are important recruit communication.