SURVIVORSHIP OF FORAGING HONEY-BEES

We recorded lifetime foraging activity and survivorship of individual honey bees foraging under natural settings. Bees experienced a constan t 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 r eaching senescence. The patterns of survivorship are likely to influen ce the evolution of foraging behavior, and this result suggests that a ge-independent factors such as predation could play a strong role in s election of foraging range and other parameters. Our result is contrar y 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.