Extreme polyandry improves a honey bee colony’s ability to track dynamic foraging opportunities via greater activity of inspecting bees

We explored the worker-level interactions that enhance the organization of foraging in honey bee colonies with extremely polyandrous queens by determining whether a colony’s patriline number affects the activity of its inspectors (foragers who visit a previously utilized food source to see if it is profitable again). We monitored the use of sucrose feeders by foragers in free-flying colonies that had either multiple patrilines or a single patriline as the feeders were sequentially stocked, emptied, and then restocked. Multiple-patriline colonies tended to have more inspectors than single-patriline colonies, their inspectors inspected their feeder at higher rates when it was empty, and then foraged at higher rates and performed more waggle runs when it was restocked, which quadrupled feeder recruitment. The patriline profile for a colony’s inspectors consistently differed from that of its general population. We show clear ergonomic benefits of extreme polyandry for honey bee queens and their colonies.