The importance of perfume in the discovery of food by the worker honeybee ( Apis mellifera L.)

Abstract

There is a natural tendency for untrained scouting bees to associate certain perfumes with food (e.g. those of the flowers of Crataegus oxyacantha and Trifolium repens) whereas the perfume of some other flowers (e.g. Spirea arguta) are unattractive to the honeybee. If the perfume of a new crop of flowers is sufficiently strong it will sometimes attract scouting bees when they are still unable to see the flowers. It is often necessary for a bee to approach within an inch or so of a flower before she can discern any perfume it may possess. When a bee approaches an object closely enough any attractive perfume it may possess tends to act as a stimulus to further exploration which involves settling upon the object and possibly seeking food in any small crevice in or around it. Thus the perfume of the individual flower plays an important part in stimulating a nectar-seeking bee to enter it, whether she has learned to associate its perfume with food or not. Normal visitation of a flower which has previously been worked is suspended when the bee's olfactory sense is disturbed. This can be caused either by mutilation or by the presence of a strong foreign perfume. In general the results obtained from experiments with untrained bees support the conclusions reached by von Frisch (1919) in his work with trained bees, and indicate that both these categories of bees behave in a similar manner when seeking food.