Bumble bee olfactory information flow and contact

Authors: M A Renner J C Nieh

Publish Date: 2008/08/11

Volume: 55, Issue: 4, Pages: 417-424

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Abstract

Nestmate foraging activation and interspecific variation in foraging activation is poorly understood in bumble bees as compared to honey bees and stingless bees We therefore investigated olfactory information flow and foraging activation in the New World bumble bee species Bombus impatiens We 1 tested the ability of foragers to associate foragerdeposited odor marks with rewarding food 2 determined whether potential foragers will seek out the food odor brought back by a successful forager and 3 examined the role of intranidal tactile contacts in foraging activation Bees learned to associate foragerdeposited odor marks with rewarding food They were significantly more attracted to an empty previously rewarding feeder presented at a random position within an array of eight previously nonrewarding feeders However foragers did not exhibit overall odor specificity for shortterm daily floral shifts For two out of three tested scents activated foragers did not significantly prefer the feeder providing the same scent as that brought back by a successful forager Finally bees contacted by the successful forager inside the nest were significantly more likely to leave the nest to forage 386 increase in attempts to feed from empty feeders than were noncontacted bees This is the first demonstration that tactile contact a hypothesized evolutionary basal communication mechanism in the social corbiculate bees is involved in bumble bee foraging activation

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