Data for: Patch fidelity and patch preference of honey bees and bumble bees

Animals commonly exhibit a tendency to return to previously visited locations. Such tendency is manifested at different scales, for example fidelity to a site, or fidelity to a specific patch within a site. Although patch fidelity has important implications for the pollinators and the plants they visit, our understanding of patch fidelity, and the extent to which it varies among bee species, remains limited. Here, we used a mark-reobservation approach to compare patch fidelity and patch size preference between one bumble bee and one honey bee species foraging on patches of Medicago sativa L. Honey bees exhibited greater patch fidelity (76%) than bumble bees (47%); they were more likely to return to the patch where they were marked. Patch size affected the level of patch fidelity for bumble bees but not for honey bees. Bumble bees were more likely to return to larger relative to smaller patches. In addition to patch fidelity, we detected preference of bees for the larger patches. Bees vi..., We conducted two experiments with a center patch, surrounded by four peripheral patches of two different sizes and distances from the center, to compare patch fidelity and patch size preference between the two bee species. The center and two of the peripheral patches were 9.14 m x 9.14 m and contained 100 plants (small), while the other two peripheral patches were 13.7 m x 13.7 m and contained 225 plants. One of the large and one of the small patches were located 9.14 m diagonally from the center patch, while the other large and small patches were located 18.3 m away. The five patches in the design were referred to, for identification purpose, as the center patch (C), the large near (LN), small near (SN), large far (LF) and small far (SF) patches. Peripheral patches of the same size were located on the same side of the center patch, in this case north. 
Individual bumble bees and honey bees foraging in one of the five alfalfa patches were caught and marked with uniquely numbered patch-d...,