The honeybee and the deceptive orchid: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me

Abstract Pollinator foraging behaviour strongly influences the reproductive success of flowering species and pollen flow. There is a sharp difference when pollinators encounter rewarding versus deceptive flowers. We indirectly investigated the pollination behaviour of honeybees with the deceptive orchid Anacamptis morio in a natural setting by genotyping the orchid hemipollinaria they collected during foraging bouts. We examined whether the honeybees carry multiple orchid hemipollinaria and could function as legitimate pollinators of the deceptive orchids and whether their foraging behaviour promotes outcrossing. We found that most honeybees carrying more than one orchid hemipollinarium also brought hemipollinaria from different orchid plants. We also observed that when bees carried only two hemipollinaria, they typically came from the same orchid plant. When bees carried multiple hemipollinaria, at least two of them also originated from the same plant. We infer that honeybees effectively serve as legitimate pollinators and that after probing a deceptive flower, they usually fly a certain distance before probing a second one, thereby promoting orchid outcrossing. We conclude that honeybees can effectively enhance pollination efficiency in food-deceptive orchids.