Honey bees (Apis mellifera) forage by using their sense of smell and returning to floral odours that they have previously learned to associate with high-quality food rewards. Foraging bees communicate with other bees in the hive about food sources by exchanging chemical and locational information. It is well established that bees transfer non-volatile information regarding taste and quality of nectar via trophallaxis and communicate location information via directional dances. But to our knowledge, volatiles carried by returning forager bees on their bodies has not been explored as another source of chemical information. We investigated the cuticular-adsorbed odours of bees when foraging on three different crops and compared their odours with the crops’ flower headspace. We found that cuticular extracts were in majority correlated with the flower headspace where bees were foraging, specific to the crop and field. Our results support the hypothesis that the scent of returning forager bees can be communicated to hivemates and is associated with information about current floral resources. Some of the floral volatiles that we identified in bee extracts had been previously found to be key compounds learned from the crop, thus supporting a mechanism for the selection of decisive compounds.

中文翻译：

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个体觅食蜜蜂的气味。

蜜蜂（蜜蜂）），利用他们的嗅觉并回到花香中来觅食，他们以前已经学会了将它们与高质量的食物奖励联系在一起。觅食蜜蜂通过交换化学和位置信息与蜂巢中有关食物来源的其他蜜蜂进行交流。众所周知，蜜蜂通过对流传递轴传递有关花蜜味道和质量的非易失性信息，并通过定向舞传递位置信息。但是据我们所知，尚未将返还觅食蜂在其身上携带的挥发物作为化学信息的另一来源。我们调查了蜜蜂在三种不同农作物上觅食时表皮吸附的气味，并将它们的气味与农作物的花顶空进行了比较。我们发现表皮提取物主要与蜜蜂觅食的花顶空相关，特定于作物和田地。我们的结果支持这样的假设，即返还觅食蜂的气味可以传达给养蜂人，并且与有关当前花卉资源的信息有关。我们先前在蜜蜂提取物中鉴定出的某些花卉挥发物是从农作物中获悉的关键化合物，因此支持了决定性化合物选择的机制。