Speakers will present via zoom, so everyone will also have the option of attending via zoom if you do not wish to attend in person. Door prize drawn each meeting - must be in person to be eligible.
Doors will open at 6:45pm; feel free to bring a snack for yourself or even to share!
Mini Presentation:
Main Topic:
Behavioral rules and patterns of pollen storage in honey bee nests
The life of a honey bee colony starts with building an elaborate nest with multiple parallel combs. The combs and nest are a dynamic space where the bees rear young ( workers, drones and queens) and also store resources like nectar and pollen. Pollen is the primary source of protein for colonies and is crucial for colony survival. However, our understanding of how colonies store pollen within the three-dimensional nest is still limited. Here, we combine descriptive, computational, and experimental work to investigate how pollen patterns emerge and sustain in three-dimensional colonies. We also experimentally investigate how the entrance of the nest influence the pollen patterns in the nest. We show that pollen storage is highly biased even when the nest is empty (44.9 ± 14.9% of a colony’s pollen is stored in a single comb; n=17 colonies). This bias is initially driven by stochastic process and then maintained by a combination of spatial bias and bias to existing pollen in the nest. Finally, we also show that entrance can bias the pollen patterns if it biases the entering foragers to a comb within a three-dimensional nest ( 703 ± 591) number of pollen cells on the biased comb; n=8 colonies). Combined, this work provide insight into the spatial patterns of pollen in three-dimensional colonies and behavioral dynamics that lead to these patterns.
Bio: A PhD candidate at Auburn University studying honey bees with Dr. Michael L Smith. During PhD research exploring how different features of three-dimensional honey bee nests influence the storage patterns of incoming pollen within the nest. Master's degree in biology from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali (IISER Mohali) studying the acoustics, mate choice and life history of field crickets.
