Honey bee waggle dance communication increases diversity of pollen diets in intensively managed agricultural landscapes

The benefits of honey bee dance communication for colony performance in different resource environments are still not well understood. Here we test the hypothesis that directional dance communication enables honey bee colonies to maintain a diverse pollen diet, especially in landscapes with low resource diversity. To test this hypothesis, we placed 24 Apis mellifera L. colonies with either intact or experimentally disrupted dance communication in eight agricultural landscapes that differed in the diversity of flowering plants and in the dominance of mass-flowering crops. Pollen from incoming foragers was collected and identified via DNA metabarcoding. Disrupting dance communication affected the impact of dominance of mass-flowering crops in available flowering plants on the diversity of honey bee pollen diets (p=0.04). When foragers were able to communicate resource locations, colonies foraged on an increasing proportion of available plant genera with increasing dominance of mass-flowering crops within landscapes (p=0.01). This was not the case when dance communication was disrupted (p=0.5). We conclude that the honey bee dance communication benefits pollen foraging on diverse plant resources and thereby contributes to high quality nutrition in environments with low-resource diversity.