PART I. INTRODUCTION 1. The Issues 1.1. The Evolution of Biological Organization 1.2. The Honey Bee Colony as a Unit of Function 1.3.

Analytic Scheme 2. The Honey Bee Colony 2.1. Worker Anatomy and Physiology 2.2. Worker Life History 2.3. Nest Architecture 2.

4. The Annual Cycle of a Colony 2.5. Communication about Food Sources 2.6. Food Collection and Honey Production 3. The Foraging Abilities of a Colony 3.1.

Exploiting Food Sources over a Vast Region around the Hive 3.2. Surveying the Countryside for Rich Food Sources 3.3. Responding Quickly to Valuable Discoveries 3.4. Choosing among Food Sources 3.5.

Adjusting Selectivity in Relation to Forage Abundance 3.6. Regulating Comb Construction 3.7. Regulating Pollen Collection 3.8. Regulating Water Collection Summary PART II. EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS 4.

Methods and Equipment 4.1. The Observation Hive 4.2. The Hut for the Observation Hive 4.3. The Bees 4.4.

Sugar Water Feeders 4.5. Labeling Bees 4.6. Measuring the Total Number of Bees Visiting a Feeder 4.7. Observing Bees of Known Age 4.8.

Recording the Behavior of Bees in the Hive 4.9. The Scale Hive 4.10. Censusing a Colony 5. Allocation of Labor among Forage Sites How a Colony Acquires Information about Food Sources 5.1. Which Bees Gather the Information? 5.

2. Which Information Is Shared? 5.3. Where Information Is Shared inside the Hive 5.4. The Coding of Information about Profitability 5.5. The Bees' Criterion of Profitability 5.

6. The Relationship between Nectar-Source 5.7. The Adaptive Tuning of Dance Thresholds 5.8. How a Forager Determines the Profitability of a Nectar Source Summary How a Colony Acts on Information about Food Sources 5.9. Employed Foragers versus Unemployed Foragers 5.

10. How Unemployed Foragers Read the Information on the Dance Floor? 5.11.