Sristi Raj Rai, Amity University Kolkata
In the same way, as humans draw and store mind/road maps, bumblebees and honeybees also can memorize flight paths to their favorite flower stops. Bumblebees like, their relatives, also feed on nectar & pollen of flowers using their proboscis (long tube-like tongue) and colonize 50 individuals (approx.) in a nest. The worker bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) are found in varied sizes and have a different operating mechanism to fulfill their tasks. This large black fury ball (might have yellow/grey stripes), while flying back home spends most of their time looking backward to learn the location of newly-found or favorite flowers and their neighborhoods. It has already been learned that the honeybees take a longer time to memorize when the reward is high. Frasnelli et al. confirm similar trends in the case of bumblebees. Additionally, they say that the memorizing capacity for a flower offering a high prize is directly proportional to the bee’s size.
The group reported that the larger bees invest more time facing towards the flower, memorizing the location of artificial flowers with a high concentration of sucrose even if they are distant. Moreover, big bees can transport larger amounts along with them. Whereas the smaller bees do not care to invest time and effort to memorize quality-based flower locations. Due to their lower transport capabilities, they do not discriminate and visit all flowers close to the nest. Thus, because of such a different size-based collection of nectar, a colony will be able to house both high quality as well as quantity of product stored at the end.
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Source: Frasnelli, E., Robert, T., Chow, P., Scales, B., Gibson, S., Manning, N., Philippides, A., Collett, T. and Hempel de Ibarra, N., 2020. Small and Large Bumblebees Invest Differently when Learning about Flowers. Current Biology. DOI: http://10.1016/j.cub.2020.11.062
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