Differences in grooming behavior between susceptible and resistant honey bee colonies after 13 years of natural selection

Abstract

The present study was conducted to quantify at the individual level the grooming behavior of bees from resistant colonies and susceptible colonies. Experienced and naive bees from resistant colonies were compared to experienced and naive bees from susceptible colonies at the age of 4, 7, 15 and 21 days. In a total of 480 assays, resistant bees successfully groomed off 10 times more mites placed than susceptible bees. Worker of different ages are involved but the lowest percentage of grooming was observed in 21-day-old bees. The experienced bees from resistant colonies bees that have evolved in a natural environment removed significantly more mites (69.2%) compared to naive bees (51.7%) who had no contact with other older bees.