Interactions in Colonies of Primitively Social Bees: Artificial Colonies of Lasioglossum zephyrum

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Lasioglossum zephyrum usually lives in small colonies but is facultatively solitary. Lone bees and colonies produced from female pupae of the same generation were established in artificial indoor nests. Both the length of the prereproductive period and the number of cells produced per bee per day decreased with increasing colony size. In most colonies, ovarially and behaviorally recognized castes arose, a queen and workers, but with all intergradations. The mean size of queens was larger than that of workers. Nearly all queens mated although few workers did so in rooms with a few males, but mating had no effect on subsequent behavior or ovarian development. In groups of diverse age there was a tendency for the oldest bees to be queens; queens also were larger on the average than workers. In groups of equal age, the largest bee was most often queen. As would be expected for a scarcely social species, mechanisms of social integration (resulting in division of labor and differentiation of castes) mostly appear to involve behavioral features of the solitary ancestors and accidental results of joint occupancy of nests. There is no evidence of direct food or pheromone transfer among adult bees.

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