Consistency and individuality of honeybee stinging behaviour across time and social contexts

Whether individuals exhibit consistent behavioural variation is a central question in the field of animal behaviour. This question is particularly interesting in the case of social animals, as their behaviour may be strongly modulated by the collective. In this study, we ask whether honeybees exhibit individual differences in stinging behaviour. We demonstrate that bees are relatively stable in their decision to sting – or not – in a specific context and show temporal consistency suggestive of an internal state modulation. We also investigated how social factors such as the alarm pheromone or another bee modulated this behaviour. The presence of alarm pheromone increased the likelihood of a bee to sting but this response decayed over trials, while the presence of a conspecific decreased individual stinging likelihood. These factors, however, did not alter stinging consistency. We therefore propose that social modulation acts by shifting the stinging threshold of individuals. Finally, ex..., , , # Consistency and individuality of honeybee stinging behaviour across time and social contexts

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m37pvmdc6](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m37pvmdc6)

## Description of the data and file structure

The first dataset was collected to evaluate the inter-individual variability and stinging consistency of honeybees. The second dataset was collected to assess if group composition modulates stinging responses in honeybees.

### Files and variables

#### File: Kannan\_et\_al\_2024\_RSOS\_Consistencyexperiments.csv

**Description:** Each line corresponds to a bee

##### Variables

* Date: Date of data collection
* Time: Time of data collection
* Colony ID: Identifier for the colony
* Bee ID: Identifier of the bee 
* Group size: 1 if the bee was tested alone, 2 if she was tested in pairs 
* Pair ID: Identifier of the pair (NaN for single bees)
* Odour: The odour  inside the arena during all trials (0 = mineral oil; 1 = isoamyl acetate at 10% vol/vol)
* Sting trial 1:...