Honeybees use social distancing to protect themselves against parasites

Honeybees increase social distancing when their hive is under threat from a parasite, finds a new study led by an international team involving researchers at UCL and the University of Sassari, Italy. The study, published in Science Advances , demonstrated that honeybee colonies respond to infestation from a harmful mite by modifying the use of space and the interactions between nestmates to increase the social distance between young and old bees. Co-author Dr Alessandro Cini (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, UCL Biosciences) said: "Here we have provided the first evidence that honeybees modify their social interactions and how they move around their hive in response to a common parasite. "Honeybees are a social animal, as they benefit from dividing up responsibilities and interactions such as mutual grooming, but when those social activities can increase the risk of infection, the bees appear to have evolved to balance the risks and benefits by adopting social distancing." Among animals, examples of social distancing have been found in very different species separated by millions of years of evolution: from baboons that are less likely to clean individuals with gastrointestinal infections to ants infected with a pathogenic fungus that relegate themselves to the suburbs of anthill society. The new study evaluated if the presence of the ectoparasite mite Varroa destructor in honeybee colonies induced changes in social organisation that could reduce the spread of the parasite in the hive.