>The mind of the bee

Going back to about 1994 or so I see in the Bee-L archives several
discussions surrounding Dr. Lars Chittka's research into what he
describes as, *'... the richness of bees’ instincts.'*

Last year, the following video was posted on the board which
summarizes many of the salient results of his team's work including
the prospect of bee learning along with passing along learning to
their cohorts but didn't seem to gain much traction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB4CJrAGnA0

And then recently the following article appeared in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/16/bees-are-really-highly-intelligent-the-insect-iq-tests-causing-a-buzz-among-scientists

In which, *Chittka himself is “pretty convinced” that bees are
sentient beings. “We’re exposing them to challenges that no bee has
ever encountered in its evolutionary history. And they’re solving
them.”*

So I am curious if anyone on the board has looked deeply into this
subject and considered the topics of bee learning/teaching and now the
question of sentience in bees?

For reference, there is a companion talk by Dr. Chittka on Kirstin
Traynor's podcast:

https://2millionblossoms.com/thepodcast/23/

And then there is this:

Dr. Chittka references work that Dr. Page did at Arizona State
concerning relative learning performance between two distinct
genotypes (i.e. their high pollen and high nectar lines), suggesting
that speed and scope of social learning are heritable. The papers
themselves are unfortunately locked-down, but we have snippets from
both:

Responsiveness to sucrose affects tactile and olfactory learning in
preforaging honey bees of two genetic strains
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166432800003594?via%3Dihub>

*'Genotype did not have a direct effect on acquisition. In high- and
low-strain bees, individuals with high gustatory response scores
learned better than bees with low gustatory scores. This is true both
for tactile and olfactory learning. The correlation between
responsiveness to sucrose and acquisition scores is not different
between the strains. But genotype did affect sucrose perception and
thus indirectly affected learning performance.'*

The Effects of Genotype, Foraging Role, and Sucrose Responsiveness on
the Tactile Learning Performance of Honey Bees (Apis mellifera L.)
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1074742700939960>

*'We analyzed sucrose responsiveness and associative tactile learning
in two genetic strains of honey bees under laboratory conditions.
These strains differ in their foraging behavior. Bees of the “high”
strain preferentially collect pollen. “Low”-strain bees mainly forage
for nectar. Responsiveness to different sucrose concentrations and
tactile learning were examined using the proboscis extension reflex.
Acquisition, extinction of conditioned responses, and responses to an
alternative tactile stimulus were tested. High-strain bees are more
responsive to sucrose than low-strain bees. Regardless of genotype,
pollen foragers are more responsive to sucrose than nectar foragers.
In bees of both strains we find the same relationship between
responsiveness to sucrose and acquisition. Bees responding to low
sucrose concentrations show more often the conditioned response during
acquisition than those responding only to higher sucrose
concentrations. Extinction of conditioned responses depends on the
response probability during acquisition. Discrimination between the
two tactile stimuli is affected by genotype but not by responsiveness
to sucrose. High-strain bees discriminate better than low-strain bees.
Our experiments thus establish links between division of labor,
responsiveness to sucrose, and associative learning in honey bees.'*

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