Discriminant conditioning of foragers in the Asian honey bees Apis cerana and A.dorsata

.1 Nectivore foraging environments are typically modelled as choices among non‐fluctuating rewards, but in reality they often consist of intermittent daily nectar and pollen sources. Intermittent rewards create two distinct foraging problems for colonial nectivores: re‐recruitment (periodically returning to intermittent rewards) and re‐allocation (finding new rewards). 2 The role of scent in learning and remembering the locations of discontinuous nectar rewards was examined by testing re‐recruitment efficiency of Apis cerana and A.dorsata to reward‐correlated scents (odour discriminant self‐conditioning). Experiments examined the responses of non‐naive foragers to an odour correlated with prior reward, and to odours not correlated with prior rewards, by placing different scents into a colony and observing the number of bees re‐recruited to a feeding station. 3 Re‐recruitment of non‐naive foragers in both species was significantly greater in response to the conditioning scent than to the experimental controls. However, species behaviour differed in one aspect; re‐recruited A.cerana foragers landed on the feeding station when unscented reward was offered, whereas re‐recruited A.dorsata foragers returned but would not land without conditioning scent present in the reward.