Bee learning and communication
A 2005 three-part study tested the working memory of honey bees, after learning to associate a certain pattern with a reward (delayed matching-to-sample).
The bees retained information in working memory for about 5 seconds, and they might have been simultaneously learning a matching and a nonmatching task; further research was needed.
[1] A number of experiments have demonstrated color recognition, discrimination and memory in honey bees Apis mellifera.
The German scientist Randolf Menzel continued the study of color vision in honey bees with more detailed tests.
This evidence of inherent bias is evolutionarily reasonable, given that bees forage for differently-colored nectar-bearing flowers, many of which are to be found in green foliage which does not signal reward.
[5] An American specialist in bee cognition, Dr. Felicity Muth, has studied the mechanism behind the associative learning in bumblebees, specifically Bombus impatiens.
The bumblebees' association between pollen and features of the anther and petal also showed that they discriminated between rewarding and unrewarding patterns.
The factors that determine recruiting success are not completely known but probably include evaluations of the quality of nectar and/or pollen brought in.
[9] It has long been known that successfully foraging Western honey bees perform a waggle dance upon their return to the hive.
In 1947,[11] Karl von Frisch correlated the runs and turns of the dance to the distance and direction of the food source from the hive.
Von Frish published these and many other observations in his 1967 book The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees[12] and in 1973 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries.
[14] Research has also shown that the dance may vary with the environmental context, a finding that may explain why the results of some earlier studies were inconsistent.
Most scientists agree that odor is used in recruitment to resources, but they differ strongly in opinion as to the information content of the dance.
[citation needed] Critics of the odor plume theory counter that most natural nectar sources are relatively large—orchards or entire fields— so, precision may not be necessary or even desirable.
Significant to the argument are the experiments of William F. Towne, of the Kutztown University in Pennsylvania,[18] in which hives are moved to "mirror image" terrain settings, and the bees are thereby fooled into dancing about the wrong location for a nectar source.
[21] Note: much of the research on the two competing hypotheses of communication has been restricted to Western honey bees (see the work of F.C.
Research that was published in November 2004, by scientists under the leadership of Zachary Huang, Michigan State University indicates that so called primer pheromones play an important part in how a honey bee colony adjusts its distribution of labor most beneficially.
Huang's team found that forager bees gather and carry a chemical called ethyl oleate in the stomach.
[24] The function of signaling depends on the profitability, but they commonly will scent mark a food source either for self-orientation, to deter rivals or to direct a nest mate to the resource.
[24] Experiments by James Gould suggest that honey bees may have a cognitive map for information they have learned, and utilize it when foraging.
In an experimental demonstration,[25] Gould lured some bees to a dish of artificial nectar, then gradually moved it farther from the hive.
He marked the trained bees, placed them in a darkened jar, and relocated them to a spot where the dish could not be seen but the hive was still visible.
They apparently accomplished this feat by devising a new flight path based on a cognitive map of visible landmarks.
When scouts returned to the hive to communicate their find, Gould claimed that other bees refused to go with them, even though they frequently flew over the lake to reach pollen sources on the opposite shore.
Thus, we conclude that the original Lake Experiment should no longer be cited as evidence that honeybees possess cognitive maps, ‘insight’ or ‘imagination’.
"[27] A seminal paper by Menzel (1975) described the morphology and spectral sensitivity of the honey bee eye that underlie their color vision.
Menzel also found that most of the cells he studied had secondary sensitivities that corresponded to wavelength regions at which the other two receptor types were maximally active.
UV cells were found to have long visual nerve fibers that penetrated the lamina with deep tree-like branchings.
