Biomics

Apis cerana and Apis mellifera sisterly bee species, which diverged about 6 - 9 million years ago and were geographically isolated more than millions years. Last hundreds year ago these species met again in Asia due human actions. Both species are important pollinators and play key role in human life. For successful development of bees, it is important to quickly form and maintain various conditioned reflexes. Worker bees must remember the way to both flowering plants, and back to the hives. As well, worker bees must remember the smells of most presented flowers for good orientation in space and quickly collecting nectar and pollen. In order to understand the differences in the memory and memory efficiency of the two species of bees, we investigated the differences in the formation of the olfactory skills of A. mellifera and A. cerana on the basis of the reflex of the elongation of the proboscis on certain odors. Our present study demonstrated that learning and memory performance was different between two honeybee species. We showed the species of A. cerana and A. mellifera, despite their great similarity, have different abilities for forming a conditioned reflex of elongation of the proboscis under the influence of a conditional smell on the olfactory receptors of the antennae. Learning of A. cerana is slower than A. mellifera, but short-term memory after 1 hour in A. cerana is expressed better than A. mellifera. However, the long-term memory after 24 hours is much better expressed in A. mellifera compared to A. cerana. The received data allow to expand a knowledges about abilities to training and memory of different species of bees and can become an important basis for the development of new approaches for breeding bees and pollination of crops.

learning, memory, conditional reflexes, Apis mellifera, Apis cerana, proboscis extension reflex

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