Long distance foraging and recruitment by a stingless bee, Melipona mandacaia

Body size is hypothesized to play a major role in animal foraging, particularly in pollinators. In general, species with larger bodies forage over greater distances. Studies have found support for this body size-foraging range hypothesis across a wide variety of pollinator species, but have not investigated the possibility that this effect also applies within a pollinator species. We trained foragers of the stingless bee Melipona mandacaia to feeders in their native habitat under natural conditions, and found that larger foragers forage at and recruit to significantly greater distances than smaller foragers. The maximum foraging and recruitment distances are significantly greater (by 24% and 48% respectively) for larger as compared to smaller foragers. We also provide the first direct evidence that stingless bees can forage in their native habitat at distances up to 2.1 km and recruit over 1 km from their nest, recruiting more than 230% farther than previously reported for any stingless bee feeder experiments. Natural size variation among colonies within the same species may play a role in foraging range, and could thus influence plant gene flow and population structure