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Functional Compensation in a Honey bee’s Damaged Tongue while Dipping Nectar

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Abstract

A honey bee has to visit 3000 flowers to produce one-gram of honey. A honey bee’s hairy tongue dips at an average frequency of 5 Hz, and its glossal hairs erect rhythmically, performing like an opening and closing umbrella to trap the nectar. Dipping by a honey bee tongue is a typical micro-fluidic transport with a low Reynolds number. The high intensify of feeding activities inevitably damage on the fragile tongue structure. We found that that in nature, honey bees with incomplete tongue tips can still load the nectar with hairs erected. Furthermore, the hairs deploy more to form a larger umbrella-like configuration, and the dipping frequency augments when tongues are damaged on the tips, possibly compensating for the nectar intake loss caused by structural damage. Here we examine by experiments and modeling the functional compensation facilitated by the compliant mechanisms in the honey bee tongue. We put forward a fluidic transport model to evaluate nectar intake rate in a damaged tongue, considering variation in hair erection angle and dipping frequency. Theoretical analysis indicates that both mechanisms compensate for nectar intake loss caused by damaged tongue. The findings suggest a new mechanism for functional compensation in flower-visiting insects that may prove useful in engineering applications.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Center of Biomedical Analysis of Tsinghua University for theirassistance with specimen processing and SEM image capturing.

Funding

This work was supported by the research grant of Sun Yat-Sen University for Bairen Plan with a contract number of 76,200–18,841,223, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 51905556), and the Open Project of Henan Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing of Mechanical Equipment, Zhengzhou University of Light Industry (No. IM201904).

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Author notes

  1. Yue Chen and Jianing Wu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Technology, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Beijing, 100083, People’s Republic of China

    Yue Chen & Yunqiang Yang

  2. School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510006, People’s Republic of China

    Jianing Wu

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Division of Intelligent and Biomechanical Systems, State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, People’s Republic of China

    Jianing Wu & Shaoze Yan

Authors
  1. Yue Chen
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  2. Jianing Wu
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  3. Yunqiang Yang
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  4. Shaoze Yan
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Contributions

YC wrote the manuscript and planned the experiments, and analyzed the data; JW conceived the project and discovered the compensation in the honey bee-damaged tongue and performed the experiments; YY and SY conceived the project and designed the experiments.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yunqiang Yang or Shaoze Yan.

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We have no competing interests.

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Chen, Y., Wu, J., Yang, Y. et al. Functional Compensation in a Honey bee’s Damaged Tongue while Dipping Nectar. J Insect Behav 33, 71–82 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-020-09747-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-020-09747-9

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