Bees efficiently learn asocial and social cues to optimize foraging from fluctuating floral resources. However, it remains unclear how bees respond to divergent sources of social information, and whether such social cues might modify bees' natural preferences for nonsocial cues (e.g. flower colour), hence affecting foraging decisions. Here, we investigated honey bees', Apis mellifera, inspection and choices of unfamiliar flowers based on both natural colour preferences and simultaneous foraging information from conspecifics and heterospecifics. Individual honey bees' preferences for flowers were recorded when the reward levels of a learned flower type had declined and novel-coloured flowers were available where they would find either no social information or one conspecific and one heterospecific bumble bee, Bombus terrestris, each foraging from a different coloured flower (magenta or yellow). Honey bees showed a natural preference for magenta flowers. They modified their inspection of both types of flowers in response to conspecific and heterospecific social information. The presence of a conspecific demonstrator on the less-preferred yellow flower increased honey bees' inspection of yellow flowers and the likelihood of foraging on them, thus outweighing the original preference for magenta flowers. The presence of a heterospecific on a magenta flower increased honey bees' inspection of magenta flowers, but this effect was not observed when bumble bees fed on yellow flowers. Our results indicate that flower colour preferences of honey bees are rapidly adjusted in response to both conspecific and heterospecific presence, in different ways, with a preference for conspecific information possibly favouring the transmission of adaptive foraging information within species.

中文翻译：

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蜜蜂根据来自同种和异种的并发社会信息调整颜色偏好

蜜蜂有效地学习非社会和社会线索，以从波动的花卉资源中优化觅食。然而，目前还不清楚蜜蜂如何对不同的社会信息来源做出反应，以及这些社会线索是否会改变蜜蜂对非社会线索（例如花色）的自然偏好，从而影响觅食决定。在这里，我们基于自然颜色偏好和来自同种和异种的同步觅食信息调查了蜜蜂、蜜蜂、不熟悉花朵的检查和选择。当学习到的花类型的奖励水平下降并且可以获得新颜色的花时，个体蜜蜂对花的偏好被记录下来，它们要么找不到社会信息，要么找到一只同种和一只异种大黄蜂，Bombus terrestris，每个从不同颜色的花（洋红色或黄色）中觅食。蜜蜂表现出对洋红色花朵的天然偏好。他们根据同种和异种社会信息修改了对两种花的检查。在较不喜欢的黄色花朵上出现同种示范者增加了蜜蜂对黄色花朵的检查和觅食的可能性，从而超过了最初对洋红色花朵的偏好。洋红色花朵上异种特异性的存在增加了蜜蜂对洋红色花朵的检查，但当熊蜂以黄色花朵为食时没有观察到这种效果。我们的结果表明，蜜蜂的花色偏好会以不同的方式快速调整以响应同种和异种的存在，