Individual bee foragers are less efficient transporters of pollen for the plants from which they collect the most pollen into their scopae

PREMISE: Bees provision most of the pollen they remove from anthers to their larvae and transport only a small proportion to stigmas, which can negatively affect plant fitness. Though most bee species collect pollen from multiple plant species, we know little about how the efficiency of bees’ pollen transport varies among host plant species, or how it relates to other aspects of generalist bee foraging behavior that benefit plant fitness, such as specialization on individual foraging bouts.
METHODS: We compared the pollen collected and transported by three bee species for 46 co-occurring plant species. Specifically, we compared the relative abundance of pollen taxa in individual bees’ scopae, structures where bees store pollen to provision larvae, with the relative abundance of pollen taxa on the rest of bees’ bodies, which is more likely to be transferred to stigmas. 
RESULTS: Bees carried five times more pollen grains in their scopae than elsewhere on their bodies. Within foraging bou..., ,