I haven't seen the bee article, but here's some information regarding
the Planaria "memory-transfer" research.  A lot of that work was initiated
by a psychologist, James McConnell.  Beginning in the 1950's, McConnell
reported a number of papers purporting to demonstrate "memory-transfer"
in these flatworms.  In general, one group of worms would learn something
that theoretically caused intracellular chemical changes..."memory" as it
was based in chemical form.  Presumably, naive recipients of this
chemical (never identified, but fed, with the entire ground-up "learner",
to new flatworms) later showed some evidence of the memory themselves.
McConnell gained quite some notoriety as a result of these startling
findings, and his research stimulated much other research for years.
However, like the proverbial can of worms, the further researchers
delved into this issue the more confusing the results became.  Eventually,
alternative (and less interesting) explanations of the data appeared,
and people lost interest in the possibility that memories have unique
chemical correlates.  In fact, in a quick survey of half a dozen
texts on physiological psychology, only one even mentions the research
or McConnell's name, and in that case only for historical reasons.
 
The "Worm Runner's Digest", a spoof of a journal with some hilarious
"research" articles, died a similar death some years ago.  McConnell,
I hear, also passed away from a heart attack.
 
John Batson
Psychology - Furman University
Greenville, SC
BATSON@FRMNVAX1