Learning foraging tasks by bees: a comparison between social and solitary species

Social behaviour requires recognition of and communication among colony members. These types of interactions may select for increased learning and memory capabilities in highly social species. The advanced learning capabilities associated with social life may also promote an increased capacity for learning other specific tasks, such as foraging. Therefore, social bees may show a higher capacity for learning and remembering floral characteristics relative to this same capacity in solitary bees. To test this prediction, the performance of a social species of bumblebee, Bombus bimaculatus (Apidae), and a solitary species of carpenter bee, Xylocopa virginica (Anthophoridae) was compared in three experiments in which bees had to learn to discriminate between rewarding and non-rewarding flowers that differed in colour. In all three experiments bumblebees showed higher learning rates compared with carpenter bees. However, both species showed similar levels of overnight memory retention. The results suggest that social bees have better learning capabilities compared with solitary bees.