>So if individual bees can only learn something once, and cannot seem to
>re-learn basic things like "what does my home terrain look like?" .....

Don't want to get into the issue of 'choice', but the statement above just doesn't sound right.  Every fall I put top entrances on my hives and close down the bottom entrances to just a few bee-sized holes with mouse guards.  After a day or two of mass confusion at the old entrance, most, if not all, of the bees find and learn to use the top entrance.  In the spring, when I remove the top entrances, the same situation occurs in reverse.  The process takes a couple of days, not weeks, so it is not like the old bees keep going to the old entrance, until they die off and are replaced by new bees that 'know' the new entrance.  Isn't that learning?

And, many times I've used the old 'put a branch in front of the entrance' of a hive that has been moved within the same yard to make them 'learn' the new location.  I have watched them hover at the entrance, just like new foragers, re-orienting.  Isn't that learning?

Not at all trying to be confrontational.  Just trying to align what I have observed with what I have just read.  If I am wrong, someone please set me on the path to enlightenment.

Bill

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