DOI: 10.5061/dryad.m37pvmdc6
title: Consistency and individuality of honeybee stinging behaviour across time and social contexts

description: Whether individuals exhibit consistent behavioural variation is a central
 question in the field of animal behaviour. This question is particularly
 interesting in the case of social animals, as their behaviour may be
 strongly modulated by the collective. In this study, we ask whether
 honeybees exhibit individual differences in stinging behaviour. We
 demonstrate that bees are relatively stable in their decision to sting –
 or not – in a specific context and show temporal consistency suggestive of
 an internal state modulation. We also investigated how social factors such
 as the alarm pheromone or another bee modulated this behaviour. The
 presence of alarm pheromone increased the likelihood of a bee to sting but
 this response decayed over trials, while the presence of a conspecific
 decreased individual stinging likelihood. These factors, however, did not
 alter stinging consistency. We therefore propose that social modulation
 acts by shifting the stinging threshold of individuals. Finally,
 experimental manipulation of group composition with respect to the ratio
 of aggressive and gentle bees within a group did not affect the behaviour
 of focal bees. Overall, our results establish honeybee stinging behaviour
 as a promising model for studying mechanistically how collective and
 individual traits interact to regulate individual variability.
description: # Consistency and individuality of honeybee stinging behaviour across time
 and social contexts
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m37pvmdc6](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m37pvmdc6) ## Description of the data and file structure The first dataset was collected to evaluate the inter-individual variability and stinging consistency of honeybees. The second dataset was collected to assess if group composition modulates stinging responses in honeybees. ### Files and variables #### File: Kannan\_et\_al\_2024\_RSOS\_Consistencyexperiments.csv **Description:** Each line corresponds to a bee ##### Variables * Date: Date of data collection * Time: Time of data collection * Colony ID: Identifier for the colony * Bee ID: Identifier of the bee  * Group size: 1 if the bee was tested alone, 2 if she was tested in pairs  * Pair ID: Identifier of the pair (NaN for single bees) * Odour: The odour  inside the arena during all trials (0 = mineral oil; 1 = isoamyl acetate at 10% vol/vol) * Sting trial 1: Whether the bee stung during trial 1 (0 = no; 1 = yes) * Sting trial 2: Whether the bee stung during trial 2 (0 = no; 1 = yes) * Sting trial 3: Whether the bee stung during trial 3 (0 = no; 1 = yes) * Sting trial 4: Whether the bee stung during trial 4 (0 = no; 1 = yes) * RT trial 1: Reaction time for trial 1 (in seconds; NaN if the bee didn't sting) * RT trial 2: Reaction time for trial 2 (in seconds; NaN if the bee didn't sting) * RT trial 3: Reaction time for trial 3 (in seconds; NaN if the bee didn't sting) * RT trial 4: Reaction time for trial 4 (in seconds; NaN if the bee didn't sting) #### File: Kannan\_etal\_2024\_RSOS\_GroupCompositionExperiments.csv **Description:** Each line corresponds to a bee ##### Variables * Date: Date of data collection * Colony: Identifier for the colony * Group 1 ID: Identifier for the group the focal bee was tested in during test 1 (note that not all bees participated in test 2, which is why there may be less than 6 bees from each test 1 group) * Bee ID: Identifier for the bee * Group 2 ID: Identifier for the group the focal bee was tested in during test 2 * Sting test 1: Whether the bee stung during test 1 (0 = no; 1 = yes) * Rank test 1: The stinging rank of the bee during test 1 (I = initiator; F = follower; N = non-stinger; NaN = missing data) * RT test 1: Reaction time for test 1 (in seconds; NaN if the bee didn't sting or for missing data) * Total stings test 1: Total number of bees that stung in the group of the focal bee during test 1 * Grouping test 2: Condition the bee was grouped into (1 = Mixed-Gentle; 2 = All-Gentle; 3 = Mixed-Aggressive; 4 = All-Aggressive) * Sting test 2: Whether the bee stung during test 2 (0 = no; 1 = yes) * Rank test 2: The stinging rank of the bee during test 2 (from 0 = initiator to 5 = the bee stung after the 5 other bees had stung, corresponding to the number of sting alarm pheromone units released in the arena at the time that the decision to sting was taken; 6 = non-stinger) * RT test 2: Reaction time for test 2 (in seconds; NaN if the bee didn't sting or for missing data) * Total stings test 2: Total number of bees that stung in the group of the focal bee during test 2 ## Code/software The data is provided as csv files, with columns delimited by semi-colons.