Infographic: Quick Learners

Honeybees can remember reward-associated odors three days after a single learning experience.

Written byRuth Williams
| 1 min read

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Forager honeybees are exposed once to an odor while simultaneously receiving sucrose via a cocktail stick. The insects extend their proboscises to drink the sugary treat (1). At 1 hour, 4 hours, 24 hours, or 72 hours after this experience, the bees are exposed to the same odor or to a control odor. At times up to 24 hours, most bees correctly extend their proboscises in response to the paired odor (2) and not the control one (3). Even at 72 hours, approximately one-third of the trained bees do the same.

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Meet the Author

  • ruth williams

    Ruth is a freelance journalist. Before freelancing, Ruth was a news editor for the Journal of Cell Biology in New York and an assistant editor for Nature Reviews Neuroscience in London. Prior to that, she was a bona fide pipette-wielding, test tube–shaking, lab coat–shirking research scientist. She has a PhD in genetics from King’s College London, and was a postdoc in stem cell biology at Imperial College London. Today she lives and writes in Connecticut.

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