Floral odor learning within the hive affects honeybees’ foraging decisions

Abstract

Honeybees learn odor cues quickly and efficiently when visiting rewarding flowers. Memorization of these cues facilitates the localization and recognition of food sources during foraging flights. Bees can also use information gained inside the hive during social interactions with successful foragers. An important information cue that can be learned during these interactions is food odor. However, little is known about how floral odors learned in the hive affect later decisions of foragers in the field. We studied the effect of food scent on foraging preferences when this learning is acquired directly inside the hive. By using in-hive feeders that were removed 24 h before the test, we showed that foragers use the odor information acquired during a 3-day stimulation period with a scented solution during a food-choice situation outside the nest. This bias in food preference is maintained even 24 h after the replacement of all the hive combs. Thus, without being previously collected outside by foragers, food odors learned within the hive can be used during short-range foraging flights. Moreover, correct landings at a dual-choice device after replacing the storing combs suggests that long-term memories formed within the colony can be retrieved while bees search for food in the field.

Effects of fluvalinate on honey bee learning, memory, responsiveness to sucrose, and survival

“…Although it is impossible to distinguish between colony-level and temporal effects because individuals were not collected from the three colonies concurrently, if the increase in spontaneous responses is temporal (intraseasonal) it is consistent with other studies (Erber et al, 1980;Harris and Woodring, 1992). This variation may be a result of a plethora of things including increased exposure during foraging to volatile geraniol produced by flowers (Gerber et al, 1996;Arenas et al, 2007), or fluctuations in octopamine levels (Harris and Woodring, 1992). Each of these may also explain apparent satiation observed here but not in Frost et al (Frost et al, 2011).…”

Odour aversion after olfactory conditioning of the sting extension reflex in honeybees

“…In this case, harnessed bees could not have learned to approach the odour during conditioning, thus showing that transfer between situations did indeed exist. The possible natural function of this transfer ability may be related to the observation that bees do indeed learn to associate odours and nectar reward within the hive during trophallaxis with returning foragers (Farina et al, 2005;Gil and De Marco, 2005), and subsequently choose the odour learnt within the hive in a foraging context (von Frisch, 1946;Arenas et al, 2007). Most importantly, these experiments also showed that after the formation of an odour-sucrose association, the learnt odour had acquired a positive/attractive nature for the animal.…”

Floral scents experienced within the colony affect long-term foraging preferences in honeybees

“…Immediately after landings experimental bees were captured and eliminated in order not to be double counted. Testing events lasted 10 min and were performed four times a day after the training feeder was removed (Arenas et al, 2007). Testing feeders were scented by two glass Petri dishes (1 cm high, 15 cm in diameter) containing a filter paper disk (55 mm in diameter) soaked with a pure odor (50 µL pure odorant) placed below each feeder (Arenas et al, 2007).…”

“…Prior experiences with food odors have also been studied in a foraging context after feeding the entire colony with scented sugar solution (Arenas et al, 2007). After this treatment a preference for a prior circulated food scent was observed in an operant context (i.e.…”