Busy bees use their memory to hunt flowers with the most pollen and return home safely, scientists discover
Researchers crack the secret of how buzzing bees perform their honey-making duties
BEES rely on their memory to hunt for food and then make it back to their hives, scientists have found.
Pollen-collecting bees use a variety of senses and memory of previous experiences to forage.
It is believed bees do not base their foraging decisions just on taste but also make an assessment of what they found at a particular flower in the past.
Bees typically do not eat pollen when collecting it from flowers, but carry it back to via special "sacs" on their legs or hairs on their body.
The question of what exactly bees look for when they collect pollen from flowers has puzzled scientists for a long time.
Co-author Dr Natalie Hempel de Ibarra, expert in insect neuroethology at Exeter's Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour, said: "It seems that bees don't just respond to a single nutritional compound in pollen, such as crude protein content, but to a range of sensory cues in pollen and flowers.
"They also form memories for locations and types of flowers that they have visited which affect their foraging decisions.
"We need more research that considers the behaviour and neurobiology of bees to understand when and why they prefer some plants and some pollen over others.
"A breakthrough in this area could advance our efforts in both biodiversity conservation and crop production."
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The review, published in the journal Functional Ecology, examines existing evidence on how bees use their senses, previous experience and - in the case of social bees - feedback from the nest to decide where to gather pollen.
First author Research Fellow Dr Elizabeth Nicholls at the University of Sussex and former PhD student at Exeter said: "Our review is unique in considering pollen foraging from an individual bee's perspective, asking which senses bees use to decide which flowers are worth visiting.
"In our review we suggest that although bees may taste pollen during collection and use this nutritional information to guide their choices, they are also likely to pay attention to the strong odour and visual appearance of both pollen and the flower itself.
"For bees that live together in colonies, information passed on from the other bees in the nest, either via chemical cues or even special 'dances', may also be important in influencing their pollen-collecting behaviour."
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