The Behaviour and Physiology of Bees

This book presents recent developments in the understanding of bee behaviour and physiology. It is based on a colloquium held in July 1990, organised by the Royal Entomological Society and the International Bee Research Association, and includes contributions from leading research workers in the USA and Europe. The contents are divided into four parts. The first, "The Environment Within the Hive", addresses problems of kin recognition, control of the division of labour and the thermal function of the colony as a superorganism. The section on "Communication and Foraging" includes work on the analysis of the dance language of bees, on choices made by foraging bees, and mathematical modelling of the rules governing the emergence of colony-level patterns of foraging. Part three, on "Vision and Olfaction" reviews the way in which allelochemicals and visual cues provided by locomotion are exploited in foraging behaviour, together with the analysis of olfactory stimuli. The final section on "Learning Behaviour" contains challenging accounts of adaptive learning by Gould and by Bitterman, and a major review of the neurobiology of memory.
The book should therefore attract considerable interest from insect physiologists and those with an interest in social insects in general and bees in particular.