Bumble bee intelligence

[gavin]

A paper recently out from Lars Chittka's group explored bumble bees learning to pull a string to expose a sugar reward in an artificial flower hidden under a plexiglass screen. A small proportion of workers work it out then 60% of 25 naive bees that were allowed to watch also picked up the skill. The skill propagates through the colony even in the absence of the original genius bee. Cool, huh?!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKH3D2SBG4M

Alem S., Perry C.J., Zhu X., Loukola O.J., Ingraham T., Søvik E. & Chittka L. (2016) Associative Mechanisms Allow for Social Learning and Cultural Transmission of String Pulling in an Insect. PLoS Biology 14(10): e1002564. doi: (http://chittkalab.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/2016/Alem%20et%20al%202016%20PLoS%20Biology.pdf)10.1371/journal. pbio.1002564 (http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002564). (http://chittkalab.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/2016/Alem%20et%20al%202016%20PLoS%20Biology.pdf)

[Greengage]

Thats very Interesting, There is something similar with Bombus hortorum who learn to rob nectar from flowers such as foxgloves, honeysuckle and comfrey, I often wondered if one figures it out how do the others learn the process, other bees eg honey bees then figure they can obtain nectar by accessing the holes but not actualy biting holes themselves. there is still so much we do not understand.
I was looking for the origional work on this experiment, They were doing this experiment, which had been going on for many days, when the professor got a call from his graduate student. The student?s car had broken down so he had been unable to re-place the nectar source the extra 25% farther that morning. The professor said he would do it, then, that afternoon. When the professor arrived at the nectar source there were no bees present. But when he arrived at the place where the nectar should have been for that day (but had not been moved there yet), there were all the bees waiting for him! Not only had the bees gotten the math correct (25% farther), but the implication is that they had demonstrated the imagination to be able to picture the future by picturing the nectar?not where it was?but where it was going to be! The professor wrote that he would never have done such an experiment on purpose since he never would have thought that the bees could have been so intelligent!
http://www.space.com/7190-bee-celestial-navigation-human-intelligence.html
but came across this on https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC449896/ facinating what such small creatures can do.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Clever little things. Thanks Gavin.