Honeybee Responses to Sugar Solutions of Different Compositions

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Abstract
Summary Honeybee foragers were caught as they returned to their hive. Each was mounted by the dorsum on a wire, and after 45 minutes was offered two sugar solutions alternately. Bees that made a choice (e.g. imbibing one solution after rejecting the other) most often preferred sucrose to either glucose or fructose. A mixture of equal parts of sucrose, glucose and fructose was, like other mixtures tested, less attractive than sucrose or a mixture in which sucrose was dominant.