What Do Bees Think and Feel When They Buzz, Fly, and Dance?

Source: Pixabay/Pexels.

Bees are amazing highly intelligent, very likely sentient, and emotional animals. Bee expert Dr. Mathieu Lihoreau's new book titled What Do Bees Think About? is an eye-opening and mind-expanding addition to what we know and continue to learn about these tiny-brained beings.¹ Here's what he had to say about these brilliant deeply feeling beings.

Marc Bekoff: Why did you write What Do Bees Think About?

Mathieu Lihoreau: I am convinced that science can improve pretty much every aspect of our societies. It is needed to find solutions for facing the looming environmental crisis, which is probably the main challenge of humanity. But for this to work, it is a prerequisite that people trust science and scientists. One way to do this is to disseminate as much as possible our discoveries and knowledge to the general public. Bees are what I know about.

MB: How does your book relate to your background and general areas of interest?

ML: This book is the story of my life. I've studied insect behavior for about 20 years. All the discoveries I describe have been made by famous researchers who pioneered the field, and key scientists who followed in their footsteps and continue to do so.

Source: Johns Hopkins University Press/with permission.

MB: Who do you hope will read your book?

ML: This is a scientific book. University students and beekeepers will certainly find useful up-to-date information. But it is also for all curious people who want to know more about the inner lives of bees and other insects. I aim to convince people that, despite their strange looks, insects aren't that different from larger animals, including humans. Like insects, we are animals living in a transitioning world. Realizing this will hopefully be a first step towards better respect and protection of nature.

MB: What are some of the major topics you consider?

ML: The book compiles a century of research on insect behaviour, starting with the work of famous pioneers like Charles Darwin, the co-discover of the theory of evolution by natural selection, and Karl von Frisch, the co-founder of the science of animal behaviour, to the most recent and actively debated research on animal consciousness.

Throughout this history, I describe how bees manage to navigate, sometimes over several kilometers, using the sun, footpaths, tree lines, and mountains to collect nectar to feed their larvae. I also explain how these social insects communicate using a symbolic language unique to non-human animals, and often spy on each other to acquire new knowledge and develop cultural behaviour.

Very recent discoveries about the unsuspected complexity of insects' inner lives, suggest that bees have emotions, can feel pain, and are conscious. All these sophisticated individual capacities facilitate the emergence of complex collective behaviour resulting, for instance, in the fascinating architectural chef d’oeuvre that is a honey bee nest, or in democratic votes for choosing a future home. All these discoveries point towards the small and fragile insect brain that can be seen as their Achille’s heel in a highly anthropized and rapidly changing world. Bees and other insects are on the front lines. Caring for them is an absolute necessity if we are to save this world.

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

ML: There are a lot of books on bees. Most of them describe the fascinating but unique social lifestyle of the honeybees. My book deals with the scientific knowledge regarding the intelligence of bees and insects in general. Although the content is highly scientific, it is not an academic textbook. I hope you will learn about what goes on behind the scenes of research, how major discoveries were made, how researchers failed and sometimes succeeded, and how this story is changing our conception of insect beings and animal intelligence in general.

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

ML: I am somewhat hopeful. We are living in difficult times in which biodiversity is declining and the climate is changing in front of our eyes. I know that my book will not stop that. However, I hope it can help trigger a change in the way we all treat our environment, starting with small insects. Over the past decades, researchers have begun to build a new idea of who insects are, as cognitive and sentient beings. This scientific revolution has changed the way scientists consider insects and interact with them, with, for instance, the emergence of discussions about insect welfare. Humans are not that different from these small animals and this realization has forced us to change our interactions with them. I hope the same will happen to readers of this book as well.