• Hero Banner
  • ACVCACVC
  • DVM 360
  • Fetch DVM 360Fetch DVM 360
DVM 360
dvm360 | Veterinary News, Veterinarian Insights, Medicine, Pet Care
dvm360 | Veterinary News, Veterinarian Insights, Medicine, Pet Care
By Role
AssociatesOwnersPractice ManagerStudentsTechnicians
Subscriptions
dvm360 Newsletterdvm360 Magazine
News
All News
Association
Breaking News
Education
Equine
FDA
Law & Ethics
Market Trends
Medical
Products
Recalls
Regulatory
Digital Media
dvm360 LIVE!™
Expert Interviews
The Vet Blast Podcast
Medical World News
Pet Connections
The Dilemma Live
Vet Perspectives™
Weekly Newscast
dvm360 Insights™
Publications
All Publications
dvm360
Firstline
Supplements
Top Recommended Veterinary Products
Vetted
Clinical
All Clinical
Anesthesia
Animal Welfare
Behavior
Cardiology
CBD in Pets
Dentistry
Dermatology
Diabetes
Emergency & Critical Care
Endocrinology
Equine Medicine
Exotic Animal Medicine
Feline Medicine
Gastroenterology
Imaging
Infectious Diseases
Integrative Medicine
Nutrition
Oncology
Ophthalmology
Orthopedics
Pain Management
Parasitology
Pharmacy
Surgery
Toxicology
Urology & Nephrology
Virtual Care
Business
All Business
Business & Personal Finance
Buying or Selling a Practice
Hospital Design
Leadership & Personal Growth
Personnel Management
Practice Finances
Practice Operations
Technology
Wellbeing & Lifestyle
Continuing Education
Conferences
Live Conferences
Conference News
Conference Proceedings
Resources
CBD in Pets
Contests
Veterinary Heroes
Partners
Spotlight Series
Team Meeting in a Box
Toolkit
Top Recommended Veterinary Products
Vet to Vet
  • Contact Us
  • Fetch DVM360 Conference
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy
  • Do Not Sell My Information
  • About Us

© 2023 MJH Life Sciences and dvm360 | Veterinary News, Veterinarian Insights, Medicine, Pet Care. All rights reserved.

Advertisement
By Role
  • Associates
  • Owners
  • Practice Manager
  • Students
  • Technicians
Subscriptions
  • dvm360 Newsletter
  • dvm360 Magazine
  • Contact Us
  • Fetch DVM360 Conference
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy
  • Do Not Sell My Information
  • About Us
  • MJHLS Brand Logo

© 2023 MJH Life Sciences™ and dvm360 | Veterinary News, Veterinarian Insights, Medicine, Pet Care. All rights reserved.

How Bees Choose Which Pollen to Collect

November 19, 2016
Laurie Anne Walden, DVM, ELS

Researchers suggest that bees use multiple sensory cues, previous experience, and possibly feedback from other bees in their search for pollen.

How do bees decide where to look for pollen? What makes them choose one type of flower over another? In a review recently published in Functional Ecology, researchers suggest that bees use multiple sensory cues, previous experience, and possibly feedback from other bees in their search for pollen.

Flowers have evolved more than one type of signal to attract pollinators, say the authors. Plants use fragrances, bright colors, nectar, and pollen (a food source) to attract bees and encourage them to return. Individual bees seem to prefer certain types of pollen, but it is not clear which properties of pollen bees respond to. “We need more research that considers the behavior and neurobiology of bees to understand when and why they prefer some plants and some pollen over others,” said coauthor Dr Natalie Hempel de Ibarra, of the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, in a news release. “A breakthrough in this area could advance our efforts in both biodiversity conservation and crop production.”

A major question, say the authors, is whether bees assess the nutritional value of pollen when deciding where to forage. Bees evaluate the sugar content and flow rate of nectar while they are collecting it. However, they typically carry pollen back to the nest to feed offspring or the whole colony rather than eating it themselves at the flower, which makes it a challenge to understand how they gauge its nutritional content.

Advertisement

Pollen is bees’ main protein source, but according to the authors, published studies have not shown conclusively that bees select pollen on the basis of its protein content. Bees have gustatory receptors that can detect sugar, but whether they can also detect protein—or truly taste pollen—is an open question, complicated by the fact that pollen presents bees with cues aimed at multiple senses, not just taste.

Bees respond to fragrances, say the authors, and the odor of pollen is different from that of the whole flower. Bees also use visual cues to select pollen, as demonstrated by experiments in which bees learned to associate a pollen reward with a particular color. The authors note that during pollen collection, bees receive mechanosensory feedback (for example, signals indicating how much pollen a flower is releasing) and physical cues like the size of pollen grains. New research also indicates that bees can detect electric fields around flowers.

“From a bees' perspective pollen represents a multimodal stimulus, at once providing foragers with gustatory, olfactory, visual and mechanosensory cues, all of which could be used to guide their foraging choices,” write the authors. Because pollen is a complex substance and controlling for single sensory cues is difficult, determining which cues are most important to bees is not easy, they say. The problem is compounded by the difficulty of replicating fresh pollen in a controlled experiment. Commercially available pollen does not necessarily have the same properties as the pollen that bees from a particular location would encounter in nature.

Bees’ foraging choices are influenced by factors beyond the characteristics of pollen itself, say the authors. Studies have indicated that bees’ pollen preferences are modified by experience or learning. Other studies suggest that social bees change their foraging habits in response to changes in colony pollen stores, indicating that feedback within the colony influences pollen foraging.

“Our review is unique in considering pollen foraging from an individual bee’s perspective, asking which senses bees use to decide which flowers are worth visiting,” said study author Dr Elizabeth Nicholls, of the University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom. The authors conclude that more studies of bees’ sensory and learning mechanisms are needed and note that new research methods, including genome sequencing, might provide insight into how pollen functions as a reward for bees.

​Dr. Laurie Anne Walden received her doctorate in veterinary medicine from North Carolina State University. After an internship in small animal medicine and surgery at Auburn University, she returned to North Carolina, where she has been in small animal primary care practice for over 20 years. Dr. Walden is also a board-certified editor in the life sciences and owner of Walden Medical Writing, LLC. She works as a full-time freelance medical writer and editor and continues to see patients a few days each month.


Advertisement

Latest News

This week on dvm360.com: dvm360® continues to celebrate Pride Month, and other veterinary news

3 must-sees on creating an inclusive work culture

CityVet names new chief strategy officer

Workplace bottlenecks in the LGBTQIA+ community

View More Latest News
Advertisement