Responses of Foraging Honeybees in Alfalfa to Increasing Competition from other Colonies

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Abstract
SUMMARY1. When marked honeybee colonies were placed in the middle of a large, relatively uniform field of alfalfa in which the resident honeybee population was light, the number of bees foraging at various distances from the apiary dropped sharply beyond 400 metres and became very small at 600 m. and beyond (Table 1). Subsequently, when the number of colonies throughout the field was increased successively to 2½, 5 and 7½per hectare, the density of bees foraging from the original colonies (which were in the middle of the field) dropped sharply beyond 100 m. and became quite small beyond 200 m. (Fig. 3).2. When colonies of marked (cordovan) bees were placed in a similar field already well populated by unmarked bees from colonies distributed throughout at the rate of 5 per hectare, the marked foragers dispersed in much the same way as when their colonies were placed in the field first (Fig. 5).3. Competing foragers from colonies in a neighbouring field tended to keep bees away from the side of the experimen...