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Fig. 1. Experimental layout to investigate how bees tune their dancing according to
their colony's nectar influx. An observation hive was connected to a narrow
corridor and to a flight enclosure. The flight enclosure was used to control
the totality of the nectar sources exploited by the colony. Two different
feeders were used, each delivering unscented 1.8 mol l-1 sucrose
solution. The first one, individual feeder (IF), was placed at the end of the
corridor and offered sucrose solution with a constant flow rate of 5 µl
min-1. During each recording session, marked bees were allowed to
forage individually on the IF and their behaviours were video-recorded along
eight successive foraging cycles. Simultaneously, the second feeder, group
feeder (GF), was placed inside the flight enclosure and offered a constant
solution flow rate of either 3 or 90 µl min-1 (according to
three different experimental series: the constant, the decreasing and the
increasing series, see Materials and methods for details). During each
session, a group of foragers collected sucrose solution at the GF while a
single marked bee foraged on the IF. Quantifiable variations in the colony's
sugar solution intake rate were induced by modifying the solution flow rate
offered at the GF.
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