Helen Gray

• BSc (Hons) Biology
• Do essential amino acids in nectar influence honeybee learning and memory?

Honeybees learn to forage on flowers that contain valuable nutrients. Bees cannot make all the amino acids they require for protein synthesis and so much find them in nectar and pollen.  Here, we trained honeybees in a learning task to identify how these amino acids influenced learning. We found that high concentrations were repellent to older foragers, whereas low concentrations were learned faster than sucrose alone. Newly emerged bees, however, were poorer learners but were not repelled by high concentrations of amino acids. Our data are the first to show that a bee’s requirements for protein influence learning.

Funding Source: Nuffield Foundation