Landscape Learning during Flight Ensures Homing in Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) Drones

Abstract

The role of learning to navigate toward a specific location has been extensively studied in the foraging context of social hymenopteran females, which bring resources to the colony. On the contrary, empirical field studies on learning in other behavioral contexts are scarce, particularly in the context of mating. Apis mellifera males (drones) do not forage for themselves and/or for their colony, but they only return to their colony to refuel if they were unsuccessful in mating with a female. In the present study, to test whether homing in drones results from learning the landscape around their hives, we compared the homing success between drones released at sites that were familiar to them (resident group) and those released at unfamiliar sites (transported group). Drones from the resident group were able to return to their hive, whereas those from the transported group could not, with the exception of a few drones that were released close to the sites that offered direct visual information for the drones to return to the hives. These results indicate that drones learn about their hives and the surrounding landscape during their flights.