I came across this article and thought it might be interesting... Quotation: Survivorship of foraging honey bees P.K. Visscher and R. Dukas Insectes Sociaux 44: 1-5, 1997 Summary We recorded lifetime foraging activity and survivorship of individual honey bees foraging under natural settings. Bees experienced a constant probability of death per unit time away from the colony. This leads to a log-linear survivorship curve of type II. Most bees died before reaching senescence. The patterns of survivorship are likely to influence the evolution of foraging behavior, and this results suggest that age-independent factors such as predation could play a strong role in selection of foraging range and other parameters. Our result is contrary to the pattern expected if survivorship of individual honey bee foragers is determined largely by a limited lifetime budget of energy expenditure, which would imply a low probability of mortality early in a bee's foraging life, followed by a sharp increase in mortality late in life, when either physiological or mechanical wear cause death. End of quotation Part of one of their figures: The observed distribution of total lifetime foraging duration for 33 bees _________ 7 | | | | | |_________ Bees 6 | | | | | | | | | | dying 5 | | | | | | | | | | per 4 | | | | | | | | | | 10 hr 3 | | | | | | | | | |_________ inter- 2 | | | | | | | | | | | | | |______________ 1 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Hours of foraging ____________________________________________________________________ Michael Haberl Zoologisches Institut der Uni Muenchen Tel: ++49 89 5902-444 Luisenstr. 14 Fax: ++49 89 5902-450 80333 Muenchen e-mail: [log in to unmask] Germany http://www.ebe-online.de/home/mhaberl/index.htm ____________________________________________________________________