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It is possible to train honeybees to prefer certain flowers. Feeding them food with a sunflower scent makes them more likely to visit sunflowers, boosting seed production by up to 60 per cent.

Many crops require insect pollination. In some parts of the world, beehives are routinely to maximise pollination levels during the brief flowering periods. When the hives are moved, it can take time for the bees to start foraging on the new crop around them

鈥淏y conditioning bees inside the nest, it鈥檚 possible to reduce the delay to begin foraging in a new surrounding,鈥� says Walter Farina at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

His team had previously shown that honeybees remember the food scents exchanged within colonies. To see if these memories can be exploited to influence behaviour, the researchers first developed a simplified version of the scent of sunflowers, containing just a few key chemicals. They then gave some hives a sugar solution with this scent added, to train the bees to associate the scent with a reward.

When these hives were moved near to a field of sunflowers, foragers from the hives started doing waggle dances directing other bees to the sunflower field within an hour, and just a few hours later 84 per cent of all waggle dances were directing other bees to the sunflowers.

By contrast, in hives that had been given sugar without the sunflower scent added, it was 5 hours before any waggle dances directed bees to the sunflowers.

The researchers also put harmless coloured powder at the entrance to hives so that exiting bees would be colour-marked. They then caught bees visiting sunflowers and checked their colour. This confirmed that more bees from the hives fed the scented food were visiting sunflowers.

Finally, the team showed that seed weight per hectare was between 30 and 60 per cent higher in plots pollinated by hives fed the sunflower-scented food, compared with hives that weren鈥檛 fed or were given unscented sugar.

Farina thinks it would be practical for commercial farmers to use this approach to boost pollination levels. The team is now developing simplified scents for almond, pear and apple, he says.

Globally there has been a decline in the numbers of wild pollinating insects. There have also been die-offs in commercial hives.