Symmetry breaking in collective honeybee foraging: a simulation study

Abstract

Symmetry breaking is the phenomenon that the numbers of foragers exploiting two equally profitable food sources will diverge. This phenomenon has been investigated in ants [1,4,5], but hardly in honeybees. It is even not clear whether in honeybees symmetry breaking can occur [3, p.190]. We present results of an individual-oriented simulation model showing that under specific circumstances symmetry breaking in the numbers of honeybee workers exploiting two or four identical nectar sources can occur. We studied factors that influence the occurrence of symmetry breaking, which include: size of the forager pool, number of bees initially exploiting the sources, and size of the flower patch. This study is part of an ongoing study which aims at developing an individual-oriented simulation model capturing the necessary and sufficient behavioural rules to generate the collective foraging patterns observed in bees