Conditioning honeybees Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera: Apidae) to a synthetic floral scent for improving foraging towards apple (Malus domestica) trees

DÍAZ, PAULA; ARENAS, ANDRÉS; FARINA WM

Colonia de Sacramento

Congreso; I Congreso de la Sociedad Latinoamericana de Ecología Química; 2010

Pollination mediated by honeybees increase the fruit trees yield (Kevan 1977). Honeybees assure pollen transferring from a flower to another while they forage. Most of the floral cues experienced by bees at the field can be transferred and learned inside their colonies. While distributing the nectar within the hive associative memories can be shaped. These experiences affect preferences for specific floral scents even several days after acquisition [1]. With the aim to promote honeybee foraging to apple trees, we produced a synthetic mix of volatiles that honeybees cannot discriminate from the natural odor of apple flowers in laboratory assays. Matching with these results, honeybee colonies treated with this mix and placed at the edge of an apple crop showed higher levels of foraging activity than the untreated colonies. Present results suggest that the specific odor memories formed within the treated hives can bias foraging preferences to apple crops, a fact that would facilitate an efficient pollination by honeybees.     [1] Farina, W. M.; Grueter, C. and Díaz, P. C. (2005). Social learning of floral odours inside the honeybee hive. Proc. R. Soc. B. 272: 1923-1928.   This study was supported by funds from CONICET, UBACYT and ANPCYT grants to WMF. Also a Guggenheim Fellowship supports WMF