Use Of Honey-Sac Load and Dance Characteristics of Worker Honeybees to Determine Their Sugar Preferences

SummaryFrequency of dancing by returning honeybees (Apis mellifera) was shown to be positively correlated with concentration of sugar solution they had collected. Also, sucrose resulted in more dances than fructose, which in turn led to more dances than glucose.Amounts of these three sugars collected, when offered alone and in various combinations, showed sucrose to be the most acceptable sugar and glucose to be generally the least acceptable. However, at concentrations of 40% and 50% bees collected larger loads of glucose than of fructose. Mixtures of equal parts sucrose, glucose and fructose were collected in loads not significantly different in volume from other mixtures of these sugars.