Flight activity, associative learning, and memory in Asian honey bee Apis cerana

Abstract

Honey bees have an important role as pollinators and are able to learn the flowering patches during foraging. These experiments aimed to investigate the associative learning and memory abilities of Apis cerana to find sugar and to observe the flight activities of the bees. The bees were trained using sugar solution at several distances using red and green papers as the landmarks that were placed beneath the sugar. Associative learning and long-term memory tests were carried out on day four and eleven after the training, respectively. On day four, we changed the angle of the sugar solution position to learn the length of time bees can find the shifting sugar. Our results confirmed that A. cerana could performed the training, as shown by the increasing number of A. cerana to the sugar from day one to day three during the training due to the recruitment process of the recruiter bee. A. cerana succeeded in associating each color and angle of landmarks and find the sugar in 15 minutes given in the day four. However, A. cerana failed the long-term memory test. Temperature and humidity showed negative and positive correlations, respectively, with the increasing number of flight activities of the bees.