<p>Environmental contaminants that influence learning and memory can impact novel resource exploration behaviors; bees, which feed on ephemeral floral resources and must successfully navigate to and from a nest, are particularly vulnerable to such effects. Neonicotinoid pesticides influence learning and memory capabilities in bees, but no study has assessed their impacts on novel resource exploration and its underlying neural genetic processes. We assessed how exposure to field-realistic concentrations of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid impacted novel resource exploration behavior and brain expression levels of genes known to mediate these behaviors in honey bees (<i>Apis mellifera</i> L.). We found few effects of imidacloprid on foraging behaviors, and significant colony interaction effects where they did occur. We find some evidence that exploratory bees exposed to imidacloprid took longer to locate a novel food source. Our gene expression results showed no effects of bee type (exploratory versus non-exploratory) on genes that predicted exploratory foraging behavior in a previous study. However, we did find some evidence that imidacloprid exposure impacted expression of two genes relevant to this phenotype, a glutamate transporter (<i>VGlut</i>) and a glutamate receptor (<i>GluRIB</i>). Our varied effects of imidacloprid exposure are consistent with the broader literature; diverse factors appear to mediate the impacts of this chemical on bee behavior and physiology. Our results suggest imidacloprid may increase the fidelity to a known resource or the willingness to explore novel resources in honey bees, but further studies, including ones in more complex foraging environments, are required to support this hypothesis.</p>