Laboratorio de Insectos Sociales, Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias (IFIBYNE), CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Sci Rep. 2021 Dec 14;11(1):23918. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-03305-9.
The increasing demand on pollination services leads food industry to consider new strategies for management of pollinators to improve their efficiency in agroecosystems. Recently, it was demonstrated that feeding beehives food scented with an odorant mixture mimicking the floral scent of a crop (sunflower mimic, SM) enhanced foraging activity and improved recruitment to the target inflorescences, which led to higher density of bees on the crop and significantly increased yields. Besides, the oral administration of nonsugar compounds (NSC) naturally found in nectars (caffeine and arginine) improved short and long-term olfactory memory retention in conditioned bees under laboratory conditions. To test the effect of offering of SM-scented food supplemented with NSC on honeybees pollinating sunflower for hybrid seed production, in a commercial plantation we fed colonies SM-scented food (control), and SM-scented food supplemented with either caffeine, arginine, or a mixture of both, in field realistic concentrations. Their foraging activity was assessed at the hive and on the crop up to 90 h after treatment, and sunflower yield was estimated prior to harvest. Our field results show that SM + Mix-treated colonies exhibited the highest incoming rates and densities on the crop. Additionally, overall seed mass was significantly higher by 20% on inflorescences close to these colonies than control colonies. Such results suggest that combined NSC potentiate olfactory learning of a mimic floral odor inside the hive, promoting faster colony-level foraging responses and increasing crop production.
授粉服务需求的增加促使食品行业考虑采用新的策略来管理传粉媒介，以提高其在农业生态系统中的效率。最近，人们发现给蜂箱喂食一种模拟作物（向日葵）花香的气味混合物（向日葵模拟物，SM）可以增强蜜蜂的觅食活动，并改善其对目标花序的招募，从而使作物上的蜜蜂密度更高，并显著提高产量。此外，在实验室条件下，给经过条件反射训练的蜜蜂口服花蜜中天然存在的非糖化合物（咖啡因和精氨酸）可以提高短期和长期的嗅觉记忆保留能力。为了测试向授粉向日葵的杂交种子生产的蜜蜂提供 SM 气味食物补充 NSC 的效果，我们在一个商业种植园中，以田间实际浓度向蜂群喂食 SM 气味食物（对照）和 SM 气味食物补充咖啡因、精氨酸或两者的混合物。在处理后 90 小时内，我们在蜂巢和作物上评估了它们的觅食活动，并在收获前估计了向日葵的产量。我们的田间结果表明，SM+Mix 处理的蜂群在作物上的传入率和密度最高。此外，靠近这些蜂群的花序上的总种子质量比对照蜂群高 20%。这些结果表明，NSC 的联合作用增强了蜜蜂对巢穴内模拟花香气味的嗅觉学习，促进了更快的群体级觅食反应，并提高了作物产量。
