Honeybees Have Personalities (Sort Of) summary

In the article Honeybees Have Personalities (Sort Of), author Elizabeth Preston’s primary point is that although honey bees might appear as natural flawless robots, they have their own shortcomings; in fact, a study discovered that these creatures might have distinctive personalities. Ecologists from Iowa State University say that whether or not animals have personalities is determined by a consistent behavioral difference. In order to track the features of honeybees, worker bees are put into experiment cages. While worker bees’ responsibilities in hives change as they age, all the bees’ behavior in the experimental cage was not affected ( due to the same age). In order to find out the reaction of individual bees in different situations, the researchers put the bee cages into some tests. These included putting a slide carrying queen mandibular pheromone, alarm pheromone, and a strange bee into the cage. Researchers found out that the bees’ reaction remained the same throughout the day. Therefore, they’ve fit the first criterion for personality. While studying the behaviors that may be possible in the three contexts, the two researchers found particularly one behavior that bees share their food mouth-to-mouth by giving food to their sisters and responding to other tests in the same way. To check the third criterion of personality, the researchers monitored behaviors in individual bees in a beehive. They found that some bees tended to work in groups while others were more fond of individual tasks. In the final part, the author concludes that the worker bees do show certain signs of having personalities; however, due to time-related changes of work, they are still more or less similar to machines.