Pollen learning in young honeybees: consumption preferences mediated by experience.

ROCIO LAJAD; A. ARENAS

Congreso; Animal Behaviour Live; 2020

Pollen nutritional content differs between plant species. Then, honeybee Apis mellifera may select pollen and adjust their intake to meet the nutritional requirements of its colony. The mechanisms by which honeybees evaluate and select pollen is little understood. Because pollen is mainly consumed at early ages, we hypothesized that pollen evaluation is mediated by young workers, who adjust pollen consumption after they experienced the different pollen types that are being processed inside the nest. Therefore, we investigated the ability of young bees to evaluate and learn pollen types according to their quality (i.e. digestibility and/or palatability). To this aim, we fed the bees (either young workers confined in cages or nurse bees inside honeybee hives) two pollens (A+B) and compared their consumption preferences two days after they had the chance to experience one of the two pollens adulterated. Pollen quality was reduced by adding deterrent substances (quinine and amygdalin) or improved by a phagostimulant (linoleic acid). Consumption preferences were tested using unadulterated pollen. Controls where pollens were not adulterated were also included. In both caged-bees and hive-bees, consumption of pollens that had been adulterated with quinine was significantly reduced compared to the control. Despite the increase in the consumption of pollen that had been adulterated with linoleic acid, no differences were found respect to control group, yet it was significantly higher than that of the group amygdalin and quinine. These results show that young bees are able to associate specie-specific pollen cues with distasteful and/or malaise experience, leading to aversive memories that modulate the consumption preferences.