page_title: African bee
section_title: Nectar content and harvesting
hierarchical_section_title: African bee / Foraging economics and bee habits / Nectar content and harvesting
caption_attribution_description: Apis mellifera scutellata, Agave attenuata Afrikaans: Afrika-heuningbye voed op stuifmeel van 'n blommende Leeustert in voorstedelike Piet Retief, Mpumalanga English: African honey bees feeding on pollen of a blooming Foxtail agave in suburban Piet Retief, Mpumalanga, South Africa
context_page_description: The East African lowland honey bee is a subspecies of the western honey bee. It is native to central, southern and eastern Africa, though at the southern extreme it is replaced by the Cape honey bee. This subspecies has been determined to constitute one part of the ancestry of the Africanized bees spreading through America.
  The introduction of the Cape honey bee into northern South Africa poses a threat to East African lowland honey bees. If a female worker from a Cape honey bee colony enters an East African lowland honey bee nest, she is not attacked, partly due to her resemblance to the East African lowland honey bee queen. As she is capable of parthenogenetic reproduction, she may begin laying eggs which hatch as "clones" of herself, which will also lay eggs, causing the parasitic A. m. capensis workers to increase in number. The death of the host colony results from the dwindling numbers of A. m. scutellata workers that perform foraging duties, the death of the queen, and, before queen death, competition for egg laying between A. m. capensis workers and the queen. When the colony dies, the capensis females will seek out a new host colony.
context_section_description: Honey bees are challenged to balance energy consumption and replenishment in their pursuit of nectar. High thoracic temperatures required for foraging flight pose a thermoregulatory imbalance that honey bees attempt to alleviate by targeting particular viscosities and temperatures of nectar resources. In lower environmental temperatures where energy loss is more pronounced, it has been shown through Apis mellifera scutellata that honey bees seek warmer, less-concentrated and less-viscous nectar, an energetically favorable behavior.
  Nectar that is highly concentrated in sugar is more viscous and therefore reduces the speed of consumption and the size of honey bee crop loads. In cooler ambient temperatures, harvesting small, concentrated quantities of nectar does not allow honey bees to maintain the metabolism necessary for foraging flight. Harvesting warmer, less-viscous nectar is advantageous because of the energy gained by heat. Honey bees are able to stabilize their body temperature and make up for the energy lost by flying. In A. mellifera scutellata, it was found that crop loads were largely contained in the abdomen, though it remains unclear whether this balances out the aforementioned energy loss from the thorax during flight.
  It appears that the cost of harvesting less-viscous nectar is that it is also less concentrated in sugar and would be an energetic loss for the honey bees. However, this is not the case; the speed of harvesting nectar with less viscosity increases the quantity harvested at a given time. The relative advantage is so great that it is still more energetically favorable for a honey bee to collect warm nectar, even at low sugar concentrations (10%.) Honey bees are energetically rewarded by harvesting nectar that is warmer than ambient temperatures because they make up for energy loss during foraging and obtain more nectar more easily.
  The bumblebee’s ability to differentiate flower warmth by color and target warmer flowers is one noted precedent for nectar temperature selection in honey bees.
caption: East African lowland worker bees foraging on pollen of an introduced foxtail agave
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