These findings suggest that B. terrestris can detect and respond to differences among flowers in pollen quantity despite high intra-individual variation, but that there is no plant-level effect. As bees respond to individual flowers rather than integrating information at the plant level, the behavioural patterns documented here may help plants buffer fitness consequences of intra-individual variation in pollen rewards, which we show is substantial even at the level of pollen production and is likely exacerbated following visitation.
Laredo et al. (Mon,) studied this question.