The Fascinating Minds and Personalities of Bees

Despite their small brains—around one million neurons compared to our 100 billion—the cognitive and emotional lives of bees are remarkably and surprisingly complex.In his fascinating new book called What a Bee Knows, entomologist Stephen Buchmann explores a bee’s way of seeing the world and introduces the scientists who make the journey possible. Part of the book's description reads,

Buchmann’s insatiable curiosity and sense of wonder is infectious...What a Bee Knows will challenge your idea of a bee’s place in the world—and perhaps our own. This lively journey into a bee’s mind reminds us that the world is more complex than our senses can tell us.

Source: Courtesy of Island Press

Here's what Buchmann had to say about questions centering on what it is like to be a bee.

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write What a Bee Knows?

Stephen Buchmann: My professional career as a government entomologist and then as a university professor has allowed me to study honey bees; then bumblebees, carpenter bees, digger bees in Arizona and Mexican deserts; and, also, stingless bees and orchid bees of tropical rainforests in Costa Rica and Panama. I study the nesting, mating, and foraging behaviors of all these bees.

But, in writing What a Bee Knows, I wanted to go a bit farther afield to get out of my “comfort zone” of flowers and bees or male bees searching for prospective mates. So, I began by reading much of the modern literature by scientists around the world dealing with the sensory systems of bees and how they learn on their own or by watching other bees, and the inner workings of the different cells that make up the poppy seed–sized bee brain. I wanted to tell a different and cohesive story about just how clever bees are. I knew I wanted to reach a wide and popular audience and not just talk with other bee scientists (melittologists) who already knew many of these things about what bees know and remember.

MB: Who is your intended audience?

SB: Most of all, I wanted my book to be readable, interesting, and accessible to a general audience. My demographic is likely someone who listens to NPR programs like "All Things Considered," or the popular radio program "Science Friday," or delights in amazing nature documentary films narrated by Sir David Attenborough, with whom I’ve been fortunate to work in the Sonoran desert south of Tucson.

MB: What are some of the topics you weave into your book and some of your major messages?

SB: Hopefully, my book brings general readers into the ways and minds of bees. It details the rich sensory world that is quite alien to our own. Humans and bees both have trichromatic vision (we see three primary colors). We see red, green, and blue that match receptors in our eyes while bee vision is shifted away from the red (they are red-blind) and into the ultraviolet. A bee’s vision is also 60 times less distinct than our own. A bee can’t even see a flower until it's about 6 to 10 inches away.

An Augochlorella bee with pollen grains stuck to its face.

Source: Courtesy of Bruce Talbert

Bee olfaction is about 100 times keener than our own, and they can “read braille”—that is, recognize the fine textures of flower petals. Like us, they also taste sweet, sour, bitter, and salty substances. Unlike us, they can detect the degree of polarization of light in the blue sky.

Bees are smart. They can learn how to work complex flowers to retrieve rewards of nectar and pollen. They can remember the shape, colors, and scents of flowers for several days or count up to four. Bees can run a maze like a rat. Bees are problem solvers. They have been trained to slide doors, lift a lid, roll away a ball, or pull a string (i.e., tool-using) to get at hidden nectar.

They even exhibit social learning whereby they can learn by simply watching a hive mate perform a task. We believe that bees have nociception and can feel pain. In the simplest form, that is the definition of sentience. We don’t know for sure, but bees may even have a primitive form of consciousness or certain emotions. Some researchers consider that honey bee memories are formed during sleep and that bees may even dream.

Lars Chittka believes that bumblebees exhibit a form of play (rolling balls without being rewarded), but I’m not entirely convinced of that. Certain bees may even plan for the future by creating “resin mines” in the bark of tropical trees or cutting slits in the leaves of tomato flowers. The latter seems to induce flowering much like a gardener might pinch off old flowers to induce new buds to form. It’s amazing that we are just beginning to learn the innermost secrets of bee brains and just how intelligent they are.

MB: How does your book differ from others that are concerned with some of the same general topics?

SB: What a Bee Knows isn’t just another "beekeeping for dummies" book. The most similar book to mine is The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka. His book details in greater scientific detail the inner workings of the bee brain and many of the experiments on bee learning that have taken place in his UK laboratory. it is aimed at a more specialist audience.

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MB: Are you hopeful that as people learn more about these amazing insects, they will treat them with more respect and dignity?

SB: Yes, but bee declines due to anthropogenic causes worry me a great deal—climate warming, habitat loss, insecticides, and herbicides. Habitats around the world are losing bees (up to 20 percent in some cases), other pollinators, and insects in general. This is due to the same anthropogenic culprits that we already know about: clearing land for agriculture and housing, using the “chemical chainsaws” of agrichemicals on our fields and lawns, diseases, invasive plants, and animals and even things like nocturnal artificial lighting or the carnage that comes from the estimated 1.4 billion vehicles in the world.

Bug splats on your windshield record the end of life for myriad bees, flies, wasps, butterflies, and other pollinators, some of the small creatures that run the world’s ecosystems. But, yes, I’m somewhat hopeful that we can change our ways and that learning to appreciate the alien sensory world of bees, and their intelligence, sentience, and, perhaps, primitive form of consciousness will give us pause before reaching for that can of insecticide or installing a patio bug zapper. It would give me great pleasure if my book can help in a small way toward conserving pollinating insects.