Social Behavior

Last Wednesday, I encountered a bee outside of my classroom and decided to observe it for some time. When I first saw the bee, which looked like any other bee that I have seen, it hovered around the pollinated center of a bright colored flower and appeared to be collecting the pollen. Then the bee was joined by another bee, which had a darker complexion. The second bee seemed to be at the flower for the same reason that the first one was there, to get pollen. With the addition of this bee, the flower looked quite crowded. Soon the lighter bee started to act as if he was intimidated by the presence of the second one. In order to keep the dark bee from getting much pollen, the lighter one moved around more, covering the whole flower; in doing this, it also li...