Abstract:

The non-random movements patterns of foraging bees are believed to increase their search efficiency. These patterns may be innate, or they may be learned through the bees' early foraging experience. To identify the innate components of foraging rules, we characterized the flight of naive bumble bees, foraging on non-patchy "field" of randomly scattered artificial flowers with three color displays. The flowers were randomly mixed and all three flower types offered equal nectar volumes. Visited flowers were refilled with probability 0.5 Flight distances, flight durations and nectar probing durations were determined and related to the bees' recent experiences. The naive bees exhibited area-restricted search behavior, i.e, flew shorter distances following visits to rewarding flowers than after visits to empty flowers. Additionally , flight distances during flower-type transitions were longer than flight distances between flowers of the same type. The two movements rules operated together: flight distances werelongest for flights between flower types following non-rewarding visits, shortest for within-type flights following rewarding visits. An increase in flight displacement during flower-type shifts was also observed in a second experiment, in which all three types were always rewarding. In this experiment, flower-type shifts were also accompanied by an increase in flight duration. Possible relationships between flight distances, flight durations and flower-type choice are discussed.

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