In contrast to the wealth of knowledge concerning sucrose-rewarded learning mechanisms, the question of what bees learn when they collect pollen from flowers has been little addressed. Pollen-rewarded learning is of interest not only in furthering our understanding of associative conditioning pathways in the insect brain, it may also shed light on the role that cognitive processes may have played in shaping the early evolutionary relationship between plants and their pollinators, given that pollen is thought to have been the ancestral reward for flower visitors. Thus the central aim of this thesis was to demonstrate the conditions under which pollen may reinforce learning of floral features in two model species, the honeybee (Apis mellifera) and bumblebee (Bombus terrestris). Having developed a number of paradigms for the study of pollen-rewarded learning, here I ask what bees might learn during pollen collection, both in terms of the sensory characteristics of pollen itself and additional cues paired with this reward. Freely flying bees were shown to be sensitive to differences in the type of pollen offered for collection and were able to associate the presence of a coloured stimulus with both the availability and quality of the pollen reward. The sensory pathways involved in the evaluation of pollen were also investigated. When bees were restrained, in order to more tightly control exposure to the reward, pollen was not found to support learning in an olfactory conditioning task. Furthermore, when delivered in solution with sucrose, pollen was found to inhibit learning relative to bees rewarded with sucrose alone. It seems that pollen contains compounds which are perceived as distasteful by bees and that through the contamination of nectar, pollen may influence bees foraging decisions via differential learning and recognition of floral cues.

The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge about what characterizes a teaching situation that contributes to preschoolers' curiosity about bees and pollination. The study used variation theory and an important starting point for the theory is to understand how learning takes place. The study is based on developing a teaching situation that contributes to children's curiosity about bees and pollination, where we used the learning study as a method that enables a systematic improvement of the teaching situation. The participants in the study are 4-5 years old. The teaching situation carried out in three cycles. By using the learning study method, the data is analyzed to see what works better and what doesn't, a content analysis was used to be able to revise the activity. In the result, all teaching situations are reported in chronological order with associated analysis and revision for the next cycle. Through this, we could see in the results that the children's curiosity was aroused more in the last cycle compared to the first when the time span was doubled. In order to arouse the children's curiosity, the pedagogues' approach played an important role by being active and asking open questions. The results show that for a teaching situation to arouse the children's curiosity, there needs to be a space for the children's active participation, which means the children's questions, hypotheses and ideas. / Syftet med studien är att bidra med kunskap om vad som karaktäriserar en undervisningssituation som bidrar till förskolebarns nyfikenhet för bin och pollinering. I studien användes variationsteorin och en betydelsefull utgångspunkt för teorin är att förstå hur lärandet går till. Studien grundar sig i att utveckla en undervisningssituation som bidrar till barns nyfikenhet för bin och pollinering där vi använt learning study som metod som möjliggör en systematisk förbättring av undervisningssituationen. De deltagande i studien är 4-5 år. Undervisningssituationen genomförde i tre cykler. Genom att använda metoden learning study analyseras data för att se vad som fungerar bättre och inte, en innehållsanalys användes för att kunna revidera aktiviteten. I resultatet redovisas alla undervisningssituationer i kronologisk ordning med tillhörande analys samt revidering inför nästa cykel. Genom detta kunde vi i resultatet se att barnens nyfikenhet väcktes mer i den sista cykeln jämfört med den första då tidsspannet fördubblades. För att väcka barnens nyfikenhet spelade pedagogernas förhållningssätt en viktig roll genom att vara aktiva och ställa öppna frågor. Resultatet påvisar för att en undervisningssituation ska väcka barnens nyfikenhet behöver det finnas ett utrymme för barnens aktiva deltagande, vilket innebär barnens frågor, hypoteser och idéer.