Honey bee foraging behaviour can be influenced by preferencesfor oscillating flowers

Abstract

Foraging honey bees, Apis mellifera, need to interact with a range of moving objects, including flowers during windy conditions. Their ability to land on moving flowers, which they demonstrate regularly in nature, would require them to be able to detect, identify and compensate for the flowers' movements. We sought to investigate whether honey bees can distinguish between a stationary and an oscillating flower and whether they display a preference for one or the other. Different sets of individual free-flying honey bees were trained by presenting them with either a stationary or an oscillating flower-like stimulus, which were identical in shape and colour. Subsequently, when prompted to spontaneously choose between two identical flowers, one moving and the other stationary, honey bees exhibited a preference for the moving flower, regardless of whether they were previously trained on the stationary or the moving flower. In a further experiment, a separate set of bees were presented, after being trained, with a choice between stationary or oscillating flowers whose shape differed from the training flower. Here too, bees displayed a significant preference to land on the moving novel-shaped flower. These findings highlight the significance of flower movement to honey bee foraging behaviour. Moving objects like flowers could contribute additional visual salience which would enable easier detection, highlighting motion as an important descriptor used by insects to identify and interact with relevant environmental stimuli.