Bees Can Learn The Difference Between European And Australian Indigenous Art Styles In A Single Afternoon

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Bees Can Learn The Difference Between European And Australian Indigenous Art Styles In A Single Afternoon

We’ve known for a while that honey bees are smart cookies. They have excellent navigation skills, they communicate symbolically through dance, and they’re the only insects that have been shown to learn abstract concepts. 

Honey bees might also add the title of art connoisseur to their box of tricks. In part one of ABC Catalyst’s The Great Australian Bee Challenge, we see honey bees learning to tell the difference between European and Australian Indigenous art in just one afternoon.

Does this mean honey bees are more cultured than we are?

Perhaps not, but the experiment certainly shows just how quickly honey bees can learn to process very complex information.

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Managed Bees Versus Wild Bees? It’s Not That Simple in South Africa

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Managed Bees Versus Wild Bees? It’s Not That Simple in South Africa

There’s widespread concern about the global decline of honey bees and the associated loss of pollination services.

The honey bee is the most important single species for crop pollination. This is because they are easily managed and can be moved around to perform pollination in different food crops. It’s estimated that one third of the food we consume each day relies on pollination. And this is mainly provided by bees.

Managed Vs Wild Bees

In parts of the world, there are two distinct groups of bees: wild populations that aren’t domesticated and that roam freely, and managed bees which are enclosed in hives and kept for honey production and renting out for commercial crop pollination.

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