Just before studies, bees was indeed fed pollen and you may fake nectar ad libitum in place of exposure to colored stimuli of eating
(a) Learning performance
We acquired 12 bumble-bee (Bombus terrestris dalmatinus) territories, for each and every that features 31forty pros, regarding Koppert Biological Solutions (Berkel dentro de Rodenrijs, Holland). Most of the pros were distinctively marked to the thorax that have numbered, coloured labels (Opalith tags; Christian Graze Kilogram, Germany). That it invited men and women to end up being accurately identified in both research learning studies and you may community foraging trials.
The newest bees had been pre-taught to forage regarding 20 bicoloured, blue and you can purple, phony plant life during the a lab flight stadium. The new square, bicoloured plant life were made of one or two halves (each 12?24 mm): one purple (Perspex Purple 260) while the almost every other blue (Perspex Bluish 727). Throughout pre-degree, all bicoloured plant life had been rewarded having fifty% (w/w) sucrose provider taking in past times colour-naive bees with the same possible opportunity to affiliate each other tints with prize (Raine mais aussi al. 2006b).
