> The weight of an emerging honeybee worker is determined by several factors such as her mother’s investment, the intensity of care by the nurse bees, the availability of food in the hive, disease and time of year (reviewed by Jay 1963). Because each emerging worker bee contributes to the welfare of the entire colony, individual larvae of a colony should not be favoured by their mother or their sisters. Nevertheless, birth weights of individuals have been shown to range between 81 and 151 mg.

> I investigated the effects of differences in birth weight (i.e. the weight of a bee when she emerges from her brood cell) on the cognitive skills of the same bees 3 weeks later, when they reached foraging age. This is the period in life when their learning performance is at its best

> My results suggest that birth weight is linked to sensory responsiveness, because heavier individuals were more responsive to sucrose than lighter individuals. In bumblebees, correlations between size and visual as well as olfactory sensitivity have been demonstrated and division of labour is directly linked to differences in size (and consequently weight).

> Taken together, the results of this experiment imply a close link between sensory responsiveness, birth weight and division of labour in a honeybee colony.

Birth weight and sucrose responsiveness predict cognitive skills of honeybee foragers
Ricarda Scheiner. Animal Behaviour 84 (2012) 305e308
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