Reconstruction of honeybee behavior within the observation hive

It is known that the behavior of worker honeybees inside the hive is affect ed by many factors, such as temperature, age, and number of workers. That i s, brain signals for controlling their behavior depend not only on the inne r body condition, but also on the environment. In order to investigate the behavior within the hive, the single-individual trailing (SIT) method has b een applied to record the time-varying behavior of honeybees. In this study , behavior of worker honeybees was represented as a Markov process from the SIT data. Various behaviors with same statistical properties could be gene rated by this mathematical description. This model could be applied not onl y for reproduction of worker behavior in the hive, but also for study about the neural basis behavioral control. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All ri ghts reserved.