Survivorship of foraging honey bees

Summary:

We recorded lifetime foraging activity and survivorship of individual honey bees foraging under natural settings. Bees experienced a constant probability of death per unit time away from the colony. This leads to a log-linear survivorship curve of type II. Most bees died before reaching senescence. The patterns of survivorship are likely to influence the evolution of foraging behavior, and this result suggests that age-independent factors such as predation could play a strong role in selection of foraging range and other parameters. Our result is contrary to the pattern expected if the survivorship of individual honey bee foragers is determined largely by a limited lifetime budget of energy expenditure, which would imply a low probability of mortality early in a bee's foraging life, followed by a sharp increase in mortality late in life, when either physiological or mechanical wear cause death.