BIBLIOS

Tipo
Artigos em Revista

Tipo de Documento
Artigo Completo

Título
Washboarding: Are Man-Managed Honeybees Performing a Vestigial Activity Fostered by Cryptogams?

Participantes na publicação
Manuela Giovanetti (Author)
Cristina Máguas (Author)
Dep. Biologia Vegetal
cE3c
Silvana Munzi (Author)
Dep. Biologia Vegetal
cE3c
CIUHCT

Resumo
A common view is that honeybees are mostly managed by beekeepers for commercial purposes or as a hobby, especially in Europe. This misconception is probably due to the lack of systematic studies on wild colonies of honeybees in Europe in comparison to other regions of the world. Since we are used to considering this species as “domesticated”, we may be induced to disregard activities not distinctly linked with colony survival, reproduction, or productivity. Washboarding is one of them in which the entire colony stops resource collection activities; numerous individual bees assemble on the front side of the hive and perform repetitive movements back and forth. They are curiously synchronised but apparently without a scope. In this exploratory work, we carried out a literature review of available, mostly grey, literature. Assuming this behaviour may be linked to cavity-nesting and to tree trunks or rocks being rough surfaces hosting various cryptogams, we performed preliminary observations and manipulative experiments. From our survey, we depict that washboarding is frequently reported in grey literature/beekeepers’ reports, but rarely mentioned in scientific literature. Beekeepers who responded to a designed questionnaire observed this behaviour in various ecological situations, with no trend emerging. Our preliminary experiment of placing cryptogams in front of managed hives resulted in honeybees removing lichens (foliose types) or covering with propolis, and all species were affected. Further research is needed to clarify if lichens are removed because of their chemical compounds, because of hosting potentially toxic microorganisms, or collected as resources.


Suporte
Journal of Apicultural Science

Identificadores da Publicação
ISSN - 2299-4831

Editora
Walter de Gruyter GmbH



Identificadores do Documento
DOI - https://doi.org/10.2478/jas-2022-0016
URL - http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/jas-2022-0016

Identificadores de Qualidade
Web Of Science Q3 (2021) - 1.526 - ENTOMOLOGY - SCIE

Keywords
Apis mellifera bee behaviour beekeepers citizen science lichens online survey

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