Summary
Some typical shapes of wax-sheet are offered to the bee-workers of a beehive in order to test the «Stigmergy theory» established byGrassé with TermitesCubitermes sp. andBellicositermes natalensis. Is this theory sufficient to explain the building behavior of the Bees?
Many similarities are pointed out: the Bees lay some little wax-heaps at random wherever the first comb is built, some of them become the foundations of the first comb; the other combs are not always parallel with the first one and have to be twisted by some bonds of bee-workers; the first phasis of the construction offers an incoherent behavior, the second one is coherent. Certainly, in many exemples, it is possible to see that the achieved building stimulates and leads the bee-workers to construct the next parts of their nest. But, in the bee-world, we will have to apply a complement to the «Stigmergy theory» to explain some facts described in this paper: the remodelling of the cells and the combs by destructions, the twistling of the combs by chains of bees bound with their legs, the construction of irregular cells between male and worker-cells, etc. Finally, the complement of the «Stigmergy theory» for the bee-world will have to take in account the consecutive destructions and contructions of the same part of a comb.
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Bibliographie
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Darchen, R. Le comportement des cirières d'Apis mellifica devant un «thème» de construction. Le role des destructions et des reconstructions des rayons. Ins. Soc 9, 23–38 (1962). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02224579
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02224579