ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the foraging behavior of bumble bees as it relates to flower choice and examines foraging as it relates to changes in reward availability. Bumble bees are known to visit flowers exhibiting a wide range of colors, morphologies, and food rewards. While foraging, bumble bee workers are remarkably "single-minded", being undistracted by predator avoidance behaviors, by aggressive interactions, or by sexual behavior. Most foragers visit many flowers per minute, and the net food rewards available per unit time depend not only on the amount and quality of reward per flower, but also on the absolute number of flowers that can be visited per unit time. Create a temporary meadow, using a few hundred containers and a source of different flowers. In a population of flowers where bees are foraging, remove the petals of half of the flowers, or scent half of them with a different scent.
