The Scent of Individual Foraging Bees.

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Chemical Ecology
• Animal Behavior

Background:

• Honey bees (Apis mellifera) use olfaction for foraging and communicate food source information within the hive.
• Known communication methods include trophallaxis for taste/quality and dances for location.
• Volatile compounds on returning foragers' bodies as a communication channel remain underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate cuticular-adsorbed odors on honey bees foraging on different crops.
• To compare these bee-borne odors with the headspace volatile profiles of the source flowers.
• To determine if bee cuticular odors provide reliable information about floral resources.

Main Methods:

• Collecting cuticular extracts from honey bees after foraging on three distinct crops.
• Analyzing the volatile chemical profiles of these extracts using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.
• Comparing the bee extract profiles with the flower headspace volatile profiles from the same foraging sites.

Main Results:

• Cuticular extracts showed a strong correlation with the flower headspace of the foraging site.
• The detected odors were specific to the crop and field where bees had foraged.
• Identified floral volatiles in bee extracts matched key compounds previously learned by bees from crops.

Conclusions:

• Returning forager bees' scent communicates information about current floral resources to hivemates.
• Cuticular-adsorbed volatiles represent a significant, previously uncharacterized, chemical information channel in honey bees.
• This finding supports a mechanism for selecting key floral compounds for communication.