Early olfactory experiences within the honeybee hive have a long-lasting effect on recruitment

MARÍA SOL BALBUENA; ANDRÉS ARENAS; WALTER M FARINA

Huerta Grande, Provincia de Córdoba, Argentina

Congreso; SAN 2011, XXVI Congreso Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencia; 2011

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

Honeybees are suitable models to study learning and communication interactions since olfactory cues predicting food can be learned while forager transfer spatial information via dance. Floral scent learning within this context can be an important component during recruitment and might even have long-term consequences on foraging decisions. However, bees can learn food scents even shortly after emergence and remember at foraging ages, for instance while following dances to search for information about feeding locations. We determined that dancers, which brought back the same scent that had circulated inside the hive 8 days ago are more followed by the early experienced bees than dancers carrying novel scents. Also, a higher proportion of early experienced bees arrived at the feeder scented with the familiar odor. Thus, olfactory experiences acquired as early as the first week of the adult lifespan are efficiently retained to bias later foraging-related behaviors at a long-term scale within the honeybee colonies.