PLB: “I think bees are conscious in some way and probably feel, but the examples you give don't nail it. The waggle dance could be decoded by a machine; robots display avoidance behavior and could be programmed to say ouch! every time they bump into the wall...” 

I would say it depends on your definition of “feel.” 

My definition in this context was along the lines of JJB’s response, which was perception and avoidance. I’m certain they perceive painful stimuli (like I noted, I have the stings to prove it); whether it hurts them or not, I can’t say. As I wrote, pain is a basic response; as a long-lapsed microbiologist, I can tell you that even bacteria respond to stimuli (heat, electrical fields, food sources, oxygen levels), some directionally and some nonspecifically. On that basis I don’t see pain necessarily relating to “consciousness.” Even in humans, the reflex arc (pulling your hand away from a hot handle) completely bypasses the brain. It is not a “conscious” act. 

Whether bees are conscious or not, I would say, would be more dependent on their ability to interpret and respond to more complex stimuli—indeed such as the waggle dance. There’s a lot going on there, both on the level of the individual bee and at the level of the hive. (Wisdom of the Hive [Seeley] &tc) 
  
Defining consciousness is indeed much more tricky. In fact, I became a beekeeper in response to my personal reading on complexity and emergence 5 or 6 years back. Even to a neophyte like me it is clear that much in the way of emergent intelligent behavior can be described by very simple mathematical equations. How those equations are realized by the individual or group may constitute the definition of consciousness--regardless of whether there is a CPU integrating the data (The claustrum argument. See Koubeissi et al Epilepsy & Behavior 2014; 37:32–35 and Chau et al Consciousness and Cognition 2015; 36:256–264 for the most recent competing arguments of which I'm aware). 
  
Whether or not we are Divine (another argument entirely, and unsupportable by data), in the end, we are all bioelectrochemical machines, Peter, are we not? Maybe as the complexity of the hardware increases, the software simply gets more powerful. 

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