When workers are foraging, it is characterised by three steps: searching, recruitment, and transportation. Workers tend to search for honey more often than other food sources, and the weight of food has no impact on searching time. Workers may recruit other nestmates if the food they have found is too heavy, taking as much as 30 minutes for the maximum number of recruited workers to arrive. Lighter food sources take less time and are usually transported rapidly. Foraging workers become scouts and search solely for food outside the surface, and may subsequently die two weeks later from old age.