Research Highlights

Animal behaviour: Counting bee

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) can count up to four — giving them another
string to their navigational bow. Working at the Australian National
University in Canberra, Marie Dacke and Mandyam Srinivasan trained the
insects to fly down a tunnel in search of food placed beside one of
five identical landmarks positioned at intervals.

When trained bees flew into a tunnel that had no food, they searched
most at the previously rewarding landmark — unless it was number five.

Moving the landmarks nearer to or farther away from each other did not
fool the bees, showing that they were not relying on distance, but
were counting the number of landmarks before the food. Changing
landmarks from stripes to spots had no effect either, suggesting that
bees can use numbers in an abstract way.

Anim. Cogn. 11, 683–689 (2008)

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