Mariana Gil and Rodrigo De Marco from the University of Buenos Aires introduced a group of test bees to scented sugar solutions. On the following days they presented a selection of odours to the test bees, along with some control bees that had not smelt the sugar solution on the first day. To calculate how attracted each bee was to a particular smell the researchers measured the bee's proboscis extension. Nearly 70% of the test bees were attracted to the sugar solution that they had smelt on the first day, whereas only 2% of the control bees were interested.
The scientists think that this smell memory helps bees to select particular flowers. "Although the colony simultaneously exploits different flower species, individual bees tend to forage on a single flower species.
"This kind of flower fidelity seems to improve individual foraging strategies by reducing search and handling times," they write in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.