| Summary: | With the availability of various plants in bloom simultaneously, honey bees prefer to collect some pollen types over others. To better understand pollen’s role as a reward for workers, we compared the digestibility and nutritional value of two pollen diets, namely, pear (<i>Pyrus bretschneideri</i> Rehd.) and apricot (<i>Armeniaca sibirica</i> L.). We investigated the visits, pollen consumption, and pollen extraction efficiency of caged <i>Apis mellifera</i> workers. Newly emerged workers were reared, and the effects of two pollen diets on their physiological status (the development of hypopharyngeal glands and ovaries) were compared. The choice-test experiments indicated a significant preference of <i>A. mellifera</i> workers for apricot pollen diets over pear pollen diets (number of bees landing, 29.5 ± 8.11 and 9.25 ± 5.10, <i>p</i> < 0.001 and pollen consumption, 0.052 ± 0.026 g/day and 0.033 ± 0.013 g/day, <i>p</i> < 0.05). Both pollen diets had comparable extraction efficiencies (67.63% for pear pollen and 67.73% for apricot pollen). Caged workers fed different pollen diets also exhibited similar ovarian development (<i>p</i> > 0.05). However, workers fed apricot pollen had significantly larger hypopharyngeal glands than those fed pear pollen (<i>p</i> < 0.001). Our results indicated that the benefits conferred to honey bees by different pollen diets may influence their foraging preference.
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