ABSTRACT
The rate at which a bumble bee colony can grow is limited by the food supplies that the workers can bring into the colony. The distribution of food in the environment is varied, and there are many different potential options in foraging movements. Flowers tend to be patchily distributed, and some patches contain much larger food rewards per flower than others. Students’ will try to determine the "rules" by which the bees regulate their foraging movements on small and large patches of flowers with varying amounts of food per flower and/or with varying flower density. As an alternate or supplement to the experiment, students may wish to compare the foraging movements between 2 patches with different inflorescence densities, rather than different rewards per inflorescence. To determine whether individual bees adjust their foraging strategies in response to changes of reward availability, follow specific individual bees over many consecutive foraging trips.
