As It Happens5:58Scientists taught individual bees to solve puzzles. Soon, whole colonies knew how
Bumblebees are social learners who follow cultural trends, a new study suggests.
New research out of the U.K. shows that if you teach a bumblebee how to solve a puzzle in order to get a tasty treat, other bees in the colony will quickly learn that same skill through observation.
And when bees are shown multiple solutions to the same puzzle, a colony will — over time — develop a preference for one technique over another.
“The reason this was so, so amazing really was that it seems as though the bumblebees were capable of a form of culture,” lead author Alice Bridges told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
By culture, she means bees learn specific behaviours from each other, and different colonies adopt different sets of behaviours. This is not unlike how people from different backgrounds have culturally specific ways of, for example, preparing a certain dish.
“Not many people have really thought about culture in invertebrates, and certainly not in insects like bumblebees, who have basically brains the size of a pinhead,” said Bridges, a biologist at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England.
According to the study, it was long believed that the “astonishing behavioural repertoires of social insects” are innate.
But in recent years, scientists have begun to understand that bumblebees have an incredible capacity for both individual and social learning.
In an effort to better understand how bees acquire skills from one another, Bridges developed a puzzle box made from a petri dish containing a drop of sugar solution for the bees to slurp up.
There are two ways to open the dish and get at the sugar: The bees can either rotate the lid clockwise by pushing a red tab, or they can rotate it counter-clockwise by pushing a blue tab.
In the study, the bees could open the petri fish puzzle by either pushing a blue tab or a red tab. (Submitted by Alice Bridges)
Bridges and her colleagues trained some of the bees individually on each method. Then they introduced these “demonstrator bees” into larger colonies, and gave those groups access to the petri puzzles.
In the colonies where the demonstrator bee had learned to push the red tab, that technique quickly spread to the whole group. A similar phenomenon occurred in the blue group.
“Each colony, depending on which demonstrator we’d added, was actually learning different behaviour, sort of like a local fashion trend,” Bridges said.
Alice Bridges is a senior lecturer in lecturer in biology and animal behaviour and Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, who did her PhD at Queen Mary University of London. (Submitted by Alice Bridges)
Behavioural ecologist Ralph Cartar, who was not involved in the study, says the findings mimic how bees behave in nature — especially when they’re trying to get nectar from a particularly complex flower.
“The bee is essentially doing this puzzle solving — you know, it’s landing on a flower that’s closed and pushing it open and then sticking his tongue in to get the reward,” said Cartar, a University of Calgary professor emeritus who has studied bees for decades.
And they figure this out by — you guessed it — observing each other.
In fact, he said, bees learn a lot by watching each other, like which flowers are a good source of nectar, and which ones contain deadly predators.
“All these things show that bees in the wild pay close attention to what … the others are doing. They’re not just acting in a vacuum,” he said.
There were, however, some elements of the study that took Cartar by surprise.
In a control experiment with no demonstrator bees, some of the bees solved the puzzles on their own — but they only did it once or twice, and the behaviour didn’t spread to the rest of the colony.
“Why the heck did that happen?” Carter said. “It’s a puzzling thing.”
What’s more, when the researchers introduced both blue and red demonstrator bees to the same colony, the bees still developed an overwhelming preference for one method over the other.
That’s odd, says Cartar, because bumblebees are generalists, meaning they experiment with lots of different kinds of flowers.
In the wild, that’s because they’re looking for the best bang for their buck — whereas in the experiment, blue and red yielded the same results. So It’s possible that given equal rewards, the bees just stuck to what they were used to.
But that’s just a theory, he said, and more research is needed to say for sure.
“It’s beautiful to see a study that gives you a puzzle,” Cartar said.
Bumblebee ‘civilizations’
Co-author Lars Chittka, a behavioural ecologist at Queen Mary University of London, says the findings demonstrate that bees are “far smarter creatures than a lot of people give them credit for.”
“We tend to overlook the ‘alien civilizations’ formed by bees, ants and wasps on our planet, because they are small-bodied and their societies and architectural constructions seem governed by instinct at first glance,” Chittka said in a university press release.
In fact, Cartar says people have a long history of underestimating other species’ abilities.
“I think that’s partly because we think so much of ourselves, and so little of other things, that we’re always surprised what others can do,” he said.
“But, you know, when you think about it, we’re all set up to do well in the environments in which we evolved. And bees do bee things very well.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
