Q Do young bees learn from older bees?
I was reading a book by Lars Chittka, “The Mind of the Bee,” that presents research on bee intelligence and learning. I received seven packages of bees from California this spring to my bee yard in Washington state. I began to wonder if these young bees might benefit from older foragers familiar with the environment and if I should add such older foragers to mentor the younger bees?
Gregg Caudell
Washington, June
A
For purposes of full disclosure, I have not read that book, neither was I familiar with Dr. Chittka’s work. However, I did take the time to watch a YouTube question-and-answer video with Dr. Chittka to try and capture a sense of what work he has done and what he included in the book. Essentially, it is an age-old debate regarding how much of what we do is nature (our genes, i.e., what we are programmed to do) or nurture (how we are raised and what we learn along the way). For example, I may move my hand quickly from a hot stove without even thinking about it being hot. It just happens. That seems like a “programmed” response (nature). However, once I get my hand burned on a stove, I know not to put my hand on the stove in the future (nurture).
Dr. Chittka provides evidence that bees learn a lot of things in their lifetime. Therefore, we cannot simply assume that everything a bee does is programmed behavior (nature), rather that they may need to learn some behaviors through experience or by interacting with other bees (nurture). To support the latter statement, he provides examples of how a bee learns which sources of food are best, how to avoid a flower that may have a spider waiting to eat them on it, and even various aspects of the dance behavior. In this context, it seems important to have “experienced” bees in the nest so that naïve bees can learn from their interactions with the experienced ones.
The catch, though, is that other scientists have shown a lot of bee behaviors to be inherent. For example, I have seen research where scientists have removed the old or young cohort of adult bees from the nest. When they removed the old cohort, the younger bees jumped to behaviors they had never performed and were otherwise too young to do. Investigators have shown that these behaviors were already in the bee’s repertoire, and that hormones or other feedback loops dictated the expression of the behaviors. We still have much to learn about the mind of the bee and even more about the mind of the colony.
Yet, you ask a practical question: Will my new package of bees benefit from having bees familiar with the landscape added to their new hive? The answer is that we do not know. What we do know is that new packages of bees installed into hives located in areas with which the bees have no experience are foraging for pollen and nectar within an hour or two. Maybe adding experienced bees to the mix will shorten the learning curve or increase colony productivity quickly, but this has not seemed to matter much in the decades that packages have been used. Thus, while adding experienced bees may help (which is still only a “may” currently), I do not think it is crucial to the overall establishment and success of the new colony. I guess my summary statement would be that colonies may benefit from the addition of experienced bees, but that the benefit would be negligible. Admittedly, though, this is not my field of research and Dr. Chittka offered compelling data about the learning capacity of bees. I look forward to reading the book myself someday.
Q: Feeding wax to bees
We feed our colonies with sugar water and protein supplements but what about wax as well? I do not use my wax for anything. I try to coat new frames with an extra coating or two [of wax]. [Are there] other ways to encourage them to utilize it? If you put a wax pancake on top of a new brood box, would they break it down and build new comb? Maybe mix the wax with honey as well to really pique their interest? Your suggestions?
Michael Klein
June
A
As you know, honey bees secrete wax with four pairs of wax glands located on the underside of their abdomens. They create wax via the consumption and conversion of sugars into fat (the wax). They do not consume wax, so there is no compelling reason to get them to eat it. However, they do recycle wax. Thus, every bit of wax they recycle is wax they do not have to secrete via the consumption and conversion of sugar — nectar and honey in this case. Put simply, if bees reuse wax, they get to keep (and we get to harvest) more honey.
The catch, though, is how to get them to use it if we have it in the form of a processed block of wax. You already named one way. You can melt wax and paint it onto new plastic foundation to get bees to use the foundation more readily. However, you can only paint so much wax onto foundation until you reach a point of diminishing return. I recently watched a North Carolina State University YouTube video about a beekeeper (David Wade — https://youtu.be/bj60t74xc9s) who tested various ways of placing excess wax on frames to get bees to incorporate it into comb they were pulling on foundation. He stuffed rolled, beeswax foundation and other forms of wax onto the inside edges of a frame and was able to demonstrate that bees would use that wax during the cell construction process. The wax he used was not solid blocks like what I assume you mean with your question. [See also “Adding Beeswax to Make Honeycomb,” by David C. Wade, June 2025 ABJ.]
I think there are better things you can do with blocks of wax. You can make things (candles, ornaments, other products) out of it. I gather from your question that this is not something you necessarily want to do. I like your method of painting wax on frames of plastic foundation, though it may not be overly necessary to do. My bees pull out these frames without me adding wax to them. I like to trade blocks of rendered wax to beekeeping equipment supply companies for foundation. Many, maybe most, beekeeping supply companies have a trade-wax-for-foundation policy. This might be a good avenue for you to explore.
Long story short: David showed that you can add pieces of wax to frames and that bees would incorporate that into their comb. I am not sure what they would do with a block of wax, or even wax shavings. My recommendation, instead, is to keep it around to use on foundation, trade it to a beekeeping supply company for foundation, or sell it to someone who has a use for it. People love to purchase blocks of wax for a variety of reasons.
Q: Cooperative defense?
My small apiary is set up with pairs of colonies less than about a meter (~3 feet) apart. During an inspection, if I do something that causes that colony’s bees to become defensive (and trust me, it is always my fault), I have never noticed bees from the neighboring hive to change their attitude. They just continue to go about their business. Which leads to my question: Is one colony’s alarm pheromone different than another’s?
Roger Solomon
Connecticut, July
A
The composition of alarm pheromone is similar between all colonies. However, colonies do have entirely different thresholds of response to alarm pheromone and may release more/less alarm pheromone than do other colonies. Colonies that are docile need considerable stimuli to initiate a stinging event. Colonies that are known to be defensive respond quickly and en masse, often to the smallest of stimuli or release of alarm pheromone.
Let me provide an example of two colonies nesting in hives adjacent to one another. The first hive is docile and the second more defensive. When I get stung on the hand by bees in the first hive (which is not so common, given they are docile), no other bees from the nest fly to the sting site. When I get stung by a bee on the hand in the second hive, the one housing the defensive colony, other bees from that hive instantly fly to the same spot on my hand and begin stinging. It can be such a problem that I have to smoke that area on my hand to mask the pheromone deposited by the stinging bee(s).
This response has nothing to do with a different level or composition of alarm pheromone deposited onto my hand, but rather the threshold with which bees in that hive responded to the alarm pheromone on my hand. This is illustrated well with colonies of Africanized honey bees (those resulting from the cross of African-derived and European-derived honey bee stocks in the Americas). They respond quickly, and with force, to small amounts of alarm pheromone. It might take more pheromone or other greater stimuli to get the same response from a colony of European-derived honey bee stocks …
