For comparison
 
                     Bee       Beekeeper      Rat
 
Brain weight       0.001g       1400g          2g
 
Brain%of Body      5 (by vol.)   2 (by weight) .5 (by weight)
 
Total Neurons      1 million    100 billion    150 million
 
 
Note that the neurons are much smaller in the bee brain than in mammal
brains.  We sometimes tend to think of evolution having proceeded in humans
in the direction of bigger brains.  Evolution in computer and chip
technology has been in increasing miniaturization.  The bee brain is an
amazingly highly evolved "neural net".  A bee can "learn" a maze in only 6
times longer than a rat.  The rat has 150 times as many neurons.  This
beekeeper keeps losing his hive tool.
 
If you look at the threshold detection concentration of about 30 different
compounds (I'm talking smell here) (I also can't remember where I saw the
study--neuron death I guess) you find that bees are better than humans in
some, and worse in others.  Overall one might say that the sense of smell in
humans and bees is roughly equivalent.  But we have about 40 million
olfactory detectors in a great big schnoz and the bee has one thousandth the
number of detectors on two antennae the size of two big nose hairs!  By the
way, drones have a better sense of smell than workers.
 
If you think about the brain as a kind of computer then instincts must be
like little programs that run from a particular set of cues.  Since the bee
goes through a lot of different tasks in her lifetime these programs must be
"written" extremely efficiently in her tiny brain.  My first computer was a
timex-sinclair.  It had 2k of ram, but I had an extra rampack that boosted
it 16k I think.  I had a chess program for it, and I think it played almost
as good a game as some programs that run on machines now with 1000 times the
ram.  (But it was slow, and it had to turn the monitor off so it could
"think" :-)
 
The bee gets around have a slow "central processing unit" by routing a lot
of input from senses right to reflexes.  Notice how a bee that lost her head
keeps walking around, or how a sting keeps working.  The reflex response
time in some bee reflexes is much faster than ours.
 
Have a neurally stimulating day
Stan