The buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestrisWIKIMEDIA, LORDTORANBumblebees, which visit numerous flowers daily to sip nectar as they spread pollen, may experience glitches in their long-term memories of which blooms yield the sweetest treats, according to researchers in the U.K. In a study published in Current Biology last week (February 26), Lars Chittka and Kathryn Hunt of Queen Mary University of London showed that buff-tailed bumblebees, Bombus terrestris, can sometimes merge memories of flower patterns such that they visit blossoms that combine colors and patterns of flowers that had previously been nectar-filled. “We suspect that memory merging may be as common in animal minds as in human minds, but no one has explored this in animals before, so to find it in bumblebees was exciting,” Chittka told Science News.
Chittka and Hunt trained bees to feed on a nectar-like substance they found within artificial flowers that were colored either yellow or with black and white rings. When the researchers tested bees that were presented yellow flowers before the black-and-white patterned ones, they found that, both in the short term and in the long term, the bees preferred the flower type that they had been exposed to last. But bees that were presented with the black-and-white flowers before the yellow blooms started to prefer an entirely new flower type—a yellow-and-black pattered one—apparently mixing up the memories of the two flower types that had rewarded them with nectar previously.
“Bees can memorize more than one flower type, though there are costs,” Chittka told New Scientist. “Bees ...
