Bumblebees are cuter than you think – Sydsvenskan

British researchers have seen that bumblebees that learn to solve a problem can then transfer the knowledge to other bumblebees. According to researchers, this is the first time such behavior has been shown in insects.

In the experiment, the researchers placed an attractive reward in the form of sugar water behind obstacles. To get the reward, the bees had to solve a two-step task.

First, the bumblebee had to move a blue lever that obscured the red lever. When they managed to move the red lever, they reached a small bowl of sugar water. This is a real challenge for bumblebees, and to teach them how to do it, the researchers first allowed them to actually get a separate reward after the first lever.

After an initial group of bumblebees learned how to overcome both obstacles, the researchers paired each trained bumblebee with a bumblebee that had never seen the problem before. Then they also removed the first bonus.

It turns out that some bumblebees learned how to access the reward just by watching how their trained companion did.

The study is published in the journal nature According to the researchers, the results suggest that even bumblebees, like humans, can learn from each other. This is called cumulative culture and means that knowledge can be transferred across generations.