Social insects rely on collective behaviors to manage various environmental stressors. However, how individual stress experiences inform future collective behavior and contribute to group resilience remains unclear. In honeybees (Apis mellifera), fanning behavior serves two distinct roles: thermoregulatory fanning, which helps regulate the nest temperature, and Nasanov fanning, which is historically known to promote social coordination and cohesion through pheromonal signaling. Our findings show that honeybees dynamically balance these two fanning strategies to thermoregulate during heat stress, and prior stress experiences influence this balance. Bees previously exposed to heat stress were less likely to thermoregulatory fan, and did so at higher temperatures, indicating lingering costs of thermal stress at the collective level. Heat-stressed bees shifted away from Nasanov fanning as a collective strategy, except in intermediary social treatments. We found a significant interaction between social and thermal experience on the likelihood of both types of fanning, with a conservation of fanning behaviors after heat stress in our intermediary social treatment. This data suggests that social context during stress shapes future collective behavior. Overall, our results indicate that honeybees use a flexible, socially influenced approach to maintain collective thermoregulation, demonstrating how past thermal and social stress interact to influence group resilience.
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