DOI: 10.5061/dryad.jh9w0vtq8
title: Colony defence in bumblebees (<em>Bombus terrestris</em>)

description: Bumblebees are key pollinators of both wild plants and agricultural crops;
 hence, understanding their biology is critical for conservation efforts as
 well as for managing domesticated colonies. While their foraging and
 reproductive ecology have received a lot of attention, we know little
 about another crucial part of their behavioural repertoire: colony
 defence. The first dataset examines the defensive responses of individuals
 in whole colonies, maintained at the laboratory, after disturbing them
 with a mechanical jolt. As a result, we present a detailed
 ethogram of the defensive behaviour of Bombus terrestris in response to
 mechanical disturbances, as could be induced by vertebrate attacks or
 handling. In addition to identifying and describing the different
 responses elicited by this disturbance, this data contains information
 about their temporal sequence, their location and the proportion of bees
 involved. We also determined whether individual bees produce
 specific associations of behaviours, which revealed that a core set of
 responses is exhibited by all bees, with other behaviours being randomly
 associated. The second dataset compares defensive response based on
 disturbance type (mechanical jolt, intruder breath or foreign object).
 Overall, we demonstrate that colony defence includes measures preparing
 members for a response by signalling about the threat, searching for the
 source of the disturbance, warning intruders to maintain distance, and
 finally recovering from the disturbance. This comprehensive overview
 provides a valuable starting point to further understand how defensive
 behaviour is regulated such that bumblebee colonies can survive predator
 attacks and thrive.
description: # Colony defence in bumblebees (*Bombus terrestris*) Dataset DOI:
 [10.5061/dryad.jh9w0vtq8](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jh9w0vtq8) ##
 Description of the data and file structure This is the data pertaining to
 the article "Colony defence in bumblebees (*Bombus terrestris*),
 published in PloS ONE in 2025. The files "Dataset1_Clean.csv"
 and Dataset2_Clean.csv" list behavioural responses of individual bees
 to a disturbance, scored from BORIS. The file
 "All_Defensive_Behaviour_of_Bumblebees.mp4" is a video showing
 examples of these behavioural responses. The 3 other files correspond to
 audio data extracted from recordings of individual bees being disturbed.
 In all files, "NA" stands for "not applicable". ###
 Files and variables #### File: Dataset1_Clean.csv **Description:** Dataset
 corresponding to Part I (defensive responses of colonies with 20 workers
 and a queen to a mechanical jolt) ##### Variables * Observation.id:
 Concateneted information about the colony observed (A, B, C or D) and the
 experimental day (1 or 5) * Total.duration: total duration of the video
 file analysed (in s) * Subject: Bee performing the behaviour. Note that
 this ID is not maintained across experimental days. * Behavior: behaviour
 observed or disturbance event * Behavior.type: state for all observed
 behaviours, point for the disturbance * Start..s.: Timepoint at which the
 behaviour starts, relative to the start of the video, in s. *
 Stop..s.: Timepoint at which the behaviour stops, relative to the start of
 the video, in s. * Duration..s.: Duration of the behaviour in s. ####
 File: Dataset2_Clean.csv **Description:** Dataset corresponding to Part II
 (defensive responses of microcolonies of 5 bees to different disturbances)
 ##### Variables * Colony: Colony tested (A to F and 1 to 8) * Day:
 experimental day (1 to 3) * Disturbance: stimulus used to disturb the
 colony (breath, object or mechanical) * Total.duration: total duration of
 the video file analysed (in s) * Subject: Bee performing the behaviour (1
 to 5)  * Behavior: behaviour observed or disturbance event *
 Behavior.type: state for all observed behaviours, point for the
 disturbance * Start..s.: Timepoint at which the behaviour starts, relative
 to the start of the video, in s. * Stop..s.: Timepoint at which the
 behaviour stops, relative to the start of the video, in s. * Duration..s.:
 Duration of the behaviour in s. #### File:
 All_Defensive_Behaviours_of_Bumblebees.mp4 Video showing examples of the
 following behaviours: Abdominal pumping, Climbing/Flying, Continuous
 buzzing, Fanning, Grooming, Leg raising, Lying on the back, Patrolling,
 Perching, Pulse Buzzing #### Files containing audio data: These files
 contains acoustic temporal measurements of bumblebee buzzes, organized
 into three main CSV files. Each file serves a different analytical
 purpose: rhythm analysis, Buzz type classification, and spectral feature
 extraction. \---------------------------------------- 1\.
 call_times_for_rhythm.csv \----------------------------------------
 **Description:** Metadata and timing information for individual calls,
 used for rhythm and inter-call interval analysis. **Variables:** \-
 uniqBee, Colony, Day, Experiment, BeeID: Identifiers of individuals and
 context. \- Behavior, Behavior2, Description: Behavioral annotations. \-
 Start_s, Stop_s, Duration_s: Buzz timing in seconds. \- time_diff, ICI:
 Temporal spacing and inter-call intervals. \- buzz_pair, rythm: Buzz dyads
 and rhythmic ratio for rhythm-related analysis. \- wave_file, UID: File
 references. \---------------------------------------- 2\.
 MFCC_for_random_forest.csv \----------------------------------------
 **Description:** Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) for
 supervised classification (e.g., Random Forest). Processing details: \-
 Each call was segmented into nine equal-length windows. \- For each
 window, 12 Mel-filters (frequency bins) were extracted. \- Standard window
 everagig ws used **Variables:** \- class: Target label (call type /
 category). \- 1 ... 177: MFCC feature coefficients. \- Unnamed: 0: Row
 index. \---------------------------------------- 3\. spectral_features.csv
 \---------------------------------------- **Description:** Acoustic
 feature set extracted from buzzes Spectral features were extracted using
 the function `spectro_analysis()` from the **warbleR** package in R. Calls
 were analyzed with the following main settings: \- Window length (wl) =
 512 \- Overlap (ovlp) = 70% \- Band-pass filter (bp) = 0.07–4 kHz \-
 Threshold = 15 dB \- Window type = Hanning \- Frequency smoothing
 (fsmooth) = 0.1 \- Harmonicity analysis enabled (`harmonicity = TRUE`)
 with 3 harmonics. **Variables:** \- sound.files, selec: Recording
 identifiers. \- duration: Call duration. \- Frequency measures: meanfreq,
 sd, freq.median, freq.Q25, freq.Q75, freq.IQR. \- Temporal measures:
 time.median, time.Q25, time.Q75, time.IQR. \- Spectral shape: skew, kurt,
 sp.ent, entropy, sfm. \- Harmonic features: h1_freq, h2_freq, h3_freq,
 harmonics, HNR. \- Additional: SNR$Annotation, new_name.