The ecological success of social insects is largely based on the complex organization of their colonies. In a honeybee colony, the adjustment of labor is expected to be highly adaptive. Because biotic and abiotic factors like temperature, brood rearing conditions and nectar availability strongly fluctuate, the honey resources which are shared between all members are of crucial importance for the colony's survival. The questions posed are whether there is a performance-related reward system, what controls individual differences in performance, and how such systems might have evolved. This work focuses on the activity of the antennae at initiation of a feeding contact, impact of sugar and water content of food to the heating performance, behavioral differences between donors and recipients of a trophallactic contact, regulation of the trophallactic activity on the brood comb, and possible evolution of the performance related reward system which triggers the feeding and heating activity. The various methods used for fielding the questions in this thesis reach from classical behavioral ecology, behavioral physiology, neurobiology, and theoretical approaches.

Seeley, a world authority on honey bees, sheds light on why wild honey bees are still thriving while those living in managed colonies are in crisis. Drawing on the latest science as well as insights from his own pioneering fieldwork, he describes in extraordinary detail how honey bees live in nature and shows how this differs significantly from their lives under the management of beekeepers. Seeley presents an entirely new approach to beekeeping--Darwinian Beekeeping--which enables honey bees to use the toolkit of survival skills their species has acquired over the past thirty million years, and to evolve solutions to the new challenges they face today. He shows beekeepers how to use the principles of natural selection to guide their practices, and he offers a new vision of how beekeeping can better align with the natural habits of honey bees.