1970] 
Spangler and Taber ■ — Honey Bees 
185 
near the hive entrance. When the worker bees and ants approached 
each other, the bees initiated a characteristic behavior pattern that 
consisted initially of turning the posterior of the bees directly toward 
the ant. If the ant was directly ahead of the bee when detected, 
the rotation of the bee often approached 180°. During or imme- 
diately following this rotation, the bee fanned its wings vigorously. 
Also, simultaneously with the completion of rotation, the bee fre- 
quently kicked its hind legs rearward so they often struck the ant. 
The kicking action combined with air currents from the fanning 
wings often dislodged and moved the ant. This behavior pattern, 
repeated successively by a number of bees, effectively prevented 
the ants from entering the colony. Ants placed inside a bee colony 
on top of the brood comb frames were ordinarily removed from the 
colony in less than one hour. There was no evidence of the venom 
fanning behavior described by Maschwitz (1964). 
CONDITIONING AS A FACTOR IN THE DEFENSIVE BEHAVIOR PATTERN 
We conducted the following tests to determine whether bees that 
had not had recent or any contact with ants would respond with 
defensive behavior to ants or to an alarm pheromone. Twelve 
colonies were selected and arranged into groups of two each in a 
bee yard at Tucson, Arizona. These colonies were not opened for 
three days before testing. 
Combs with honey were placed in locations where large numbers 
of worker I. pruinosus analis readily crawled into them to imbibe. 
Then the combs with the adhering ants were inserted in the brood 
nest in one of each group of two test hives. Three hours later, an 
observer who was unaware of which hives had been exposed to ants 
placed two 3 X 150-mm dowels on the tops of the brood frames 
in each of the 12 hives. One end of one of the dowels had been 
used to crush workers of 1 . pruinosus analis ; the other dowel had 
no ant odor. The observer then counted the number of bees exhibit- 
ing defensive behavior patterns towards the dowels in each hive 
during a three-minute period. The entire procedure was repeated 
one week later, with the ants placed in the colonies that had not 
received them in the previous test. No defensive reactions to the 
control dowels were observed. A total of 379 responses to the 
dowels with crushed ant odor was observed in colonies previously 
conditioned to ants and 293 in colonies not preconditioned. When 
the data from both tests were lumped, the results (mean ± standard 
error) indicated no significant change in the number of defense 
