  To effectively forage in natural environments, organisms must adapt to
changes in the quality and yield of food sources across multiple timescales.
Individuals foraging in groups act based on both their private observations and
the opinions of their neighbors. How do these information sources interact in
changing environments? We address this problem in the context of honeybee
swarms, showing inhibitory social interactions help maintain adaptivity and
consensus needed for effective foraging. Individual and social interactions of
a mathematical swarm model shape the nutrition yield of a group foraging from
feeders with temporally switching food quality. Social interactions improve
foraging from a single feeder if temporal switching is fast or feeder quality
is low. When the swarm chooses from multiple feeders, the most effective form
of social interaction is direct switching, whereby bees flip the opinion of
nestmates foraging at lower yielding feeders. Model linearization shows that
effective social interactions increase the fraction of the swarm at the correct
feeder (consensus) and the rate at which bees reach that feeder (adaptivity).
Our mathematical framework allows us to compare a suite of social inhibition
mechanisms, suggesting experimental protocols for revealing effective swarm
foraging strategies in dynamic environments.
