Fig. 2

Spatial arrangement of the artificial flowers in the flight cage. Coordinates (x,y) of the colony nest box (black rectangle), the pre-training flower (dashed line circle) and the test flowers (plain circles F1-F10) are in metres. The distance between the nest box and F1 was 12.5 m. The distance between nearest neighbour flowers was 9 m (e.g. F1 and F4). The black arrow (bottom left) indicates North. Laptop computers, used to power the webcams on flowers and at the nest entrance, were protected from sun and rain by golf umbrellas. Photos of the flight cage and artificial flowers are shown in Additional file 1: Figures S1 and S2