In a "Nature" PBS program aired in our area last night the topic was
consciousness in the philosophical sense of "Being and Consciousness".

        The honeybee was used as an example of elementary consciousness in
animals. They placed as proof of consciousness in honeybees by stating
(as close as possible) honeybees visualize their surroundings. They
think in pictures. For comparison, humans think in language and words.
They placed as proof of this visualization a demonstration. They
captured a numbered bee that was a forager trained to goto a feeding
station. Placed in an opaque container and moved to a location away from
the capture point the bee flew directly to the feeding station. In
addition the "expert" explained that since honeybees spent such a large
portion of their time actually resting, this was proof that "and he was
sure of" the bee sitting and thinking of the activities of the day. She
would sit at the end of the day and run through her mind the images
processed during the events of the day to prepare for the next day.

        To me the premise was shaky. The demonstration showed that a honeybee
transported to a new location could return directly to a known point.
This was "known" to beekeepers some time ago. However, I reject it as
proof it is done by visualization of surroundings. Just off the top of
my head, other possible solutions could be, an internal inertial
navigation, navigation by sun, or sensitivity to magnetic fields. While
I hold none of these as the true nature of navigation I simply hold them
up as reasonable a conclusion as the one which they base their argument.
Visualization was very important to their basis of a claim of
consciousness.

Thom Bradley
Thom's Honeybees
Chesapeake, VA