Adrian Wenner wrote: > In 1946 (SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN), von Frisch echoed that sentiment: > >The brain of a bee is the size of a grass seed and is not made for >thinking. The actions of bees are mainly governed by instinct. ..." This quote intrigued me. I did not contribute to the discussion, because consciousness is a rather esoteric concept for me (I think therefore I am?????). However, "learning ability" in the bee (which IMHO has some relation to "intelligence" at least in relation to how we test intelligence) has long fascinated me, and I wondered how von Frisch could be so dismissive of this, especially in light of the fact that he had conducted so many experiments which involved bee learning/conditioning. Did he not marvel that a brain the size of a grass seed could "learn" a maze in only six times longer than a rat? (this was NOT one of his experiments.) So, I went back and reread the chapter called the "The Bee's Mental Capacity" in von Frisch's book "The Dancing Bees". In my view he uses a rather restrictive view of intelligence: "We speak of an intelligent action when someone responds in an appropriate way to a situation that is completely new to him, making use, in the process, of some earlier experience. The prerequisites for such an action are: first, a good memory for events of the past, secondly a grasp of the situation in hand, and finally the ability of mentally associating them" He gives the bees good marks for memory and the ability to form mental associations but faults them because: "Even in our training experiments the bees failed to respond whenever the task set them differed slightly from those they had been accustomed to perform in the course of their flower visits which must have been carried out throughout a period of hundred of thousands of years". I am not certain how instinct and running a maze are connected. It seems to me that one could argue that foraging is like "navigating a maze", but one could also argue that it is a novel experience for a bee, and that the problems which are offered to persons taking an "intelligence test" are not that dissimilar. In rereading the book, I did come on what I believe is a surprising and related error that von Frisch made. In the chapter on drones, (chapter six) he says in the first paragraph: "The brain of the drone is smaller than that of both worker and queen -- we are not left in any doubt as to the intellectual inferiority of the male in this case." The following is a comparison of apis mellifera from Comprehensive Insect Physiology , Biochemistry and Pharmacology, Vol 5, by Kerkut and Gilbert, Pergamon Press, 1985 page 307: worker drone total brain volume 1.321 mm cubed 7.839 mm cubed neuropil volume 1.07 mm3 (81%) 7.286 mm3 (93%) mushroom bodies 0.131 mm3 (12%) 0.098 mm3 (1.34%) central body 0.004 mm3 (0.37%) 0.0033 mm3 (0.045%) protocerebral bridge 0.0001 mm3 (0.01%) 0.0005 mm3 (0.006%) optic lobes 0.5634 mm3 (52.65%) 6.663 mm3 (91.45%) antennal lobes 0.03 mm3 (2.8%) 0.067 mm3 (0.91%) total # neurons 851,000 1,209,000 neuropil volume as % of brain volume; all others as % of neuropil volume To those figures I would add these from Hive and Honeybee: "It has been estimated that there are 5 or 6 thousand plate organs on the antennal flagella in the worker, 2 or 3 thousand in the queen and perhaps 30 thousand in the drone." So, to go back to von Frisch's dismissal of the intellectual capacity of the drone, it seems as if in terms of brain volume and neuropil volume the drone is vastly better endowed than the worker (by a factor of six or seven); and in terms of total no of neurons it has 50% more. I think we also could infer that its eyesight is likely much better (larger eyes, huge difference in optic lobes) and so is the sense of smell (five times more plate organs, twice as large antennal lobe). The central body and the mushroom body are smaller and the percentages are vastly smaller. Are these the places where all the instincts for those marvellous tasks which only the WORKER bees perform lie? But von Frisch says these are not intelligent tasks..... So, it is possible that with a much larger brain and neural and sensory capacity and a head empty of many instincts (except for a keen s*x drive) that the indolent, roaming drones are the real epicures and philosophers of the hive ; ) I did not notice many contributions from sourthern hemisphere beekeepers and female beekeepers to the thread on bee consciousness. They were probably too busy working. And von Frisch may have been unable to transcend his protestant work ethic in his comments on drones.