Experience levels of individuals in natural bee populations and their ecological implications

Learning difficult tasks requires an extended period of experience. It is unclear, however, what level of experience is exhibited by individuals in natural populations. If many individuals are rather inexperienced at any given time, they may not possess subtle information concerning, for example, local distributions of reward and danger, which may require long acquisition periods. To quantify individual experience in field settings, we conducted a field study involving extensive marking of individual honey bees (Apis mellifera L., 1758) and bumble bees (Bombus vagans Smith, 1854 and Bombus terricola Kirby, 1837) visiting milkweed (Asclepias syriaca L.) patches that harbored crab spiders (Misumena vatia (Clerck, 1757)), which prey on bees. The vast majority of bees either were fully inexperienced or had little experience with the specific flower patch that they were visiting. It is likely that such inexperienced bees do not possess subtle local information involving either reward or danger. Contrary to our prediction, even the most experienced bees did not avoid experimental patches harboring crab spiders, perhaps because even these bees did not possess sufficient experience. Our results indicate that conclusions from controlled laboratory experiments may not readily generalize to natural field settings. Thus, we must gather additional data on the long-term behavior of individually marked bees in natural conditions to better understand the interactions among flowers, bees, and bees' predators.