> The nectar foragers in a colony acquire information about their colony's nutritional status by noting the difficulty of finding food storer bees to receive their nectar, rather than by evaluating directly the variables determining their colony's food situation: rate of nectar intake and amount of empty storage comb.

> Queue length is automatically determined by the ratio of two rates which are directly related to a colony's nutritional condition: the rate of arrival of loaded nectar foragers at the hive (arrival rate) and the rate of arrival of empty food storers at the nectar delivery area (service rate). These two rates are a function of the colony's nectar intake rate and its empty comb area, respectively.

> A more detailed view of the behavior of food storer bees reveals that their behavior is strongly influenced by the number of empty storage cells in the hive. In general, once the hive became filled with honey, the rate at which food storers were able to process nectar slowed dramatically. The ultimate reason for this slowing down appears to have been an increased difficulty in finding cells in which to deposit nectar.

> Perhaps the most thought-provoking feature of the mechanism by which information about a colony's nutritional status flows down from the whole colony to the individual foragers within a colony is that it occurs *without a special signal* that has been shaped by natural selection to indicate colony condition.

Social foraging in honey bees: how nectar foragers assess their colony's nutritional status
Thomas D. Seeley, Behav Ecol Sociobiol (1989) 24:181-199

* * *

That individual bees monitor the entire
honey stores of their colony to measure nectar
influx is conceivable in *bumble bees*, since
there is not as much storage area as in species
with larger colony sizes, like honey bees.

Information flow and regulation of foraging activity in bumble bees (Bombus spp.)
Anna DORNHAUS, Apidologie 35 (2004) 183–192

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