BeeStingsR Documentation

Do Bee Stings Depend on Previous Stings?

Description

Data from an experiment to see it the number of bee stings depends on previous stings.

Format

A data frame with 18 observations on the following 3 variables.

Occasion Trial: I to IX
Treatment Fresh or Stung
Stingers Number of stingers

Details

If you are stung by a bee, does that make you more likely to get stung again? Might bees leave behind a chemical message that tells other bees to attack you? To test this hypothesis, scientists dangled a 4x4 array of 16 muslin-wrapped cotton balls over a beehive. Eight of 16 balls had been previously stung; the other eight were fresh. The response was the total number of new stingers left behind by the bees. The process was repeated for a total of nine trials.

Used in first edition, but not second edition.

Source

Free, J.B. (1961) "The stinging response of honeybees," Animal Behavior, Vol. 9, pp 193-196.