Natural History of Honey Bee Learning

Abstract

The life style of honey bees requires them to learn a variety of specific things in order to navigate and forage. The need for learning is sufficiently predictable with regard to the behavioral contexts and useful cues that it is highly structured and relatively easily studied. Although each cue seems to be learned independently, the set of cues memorized in each context appears to be stored as a unit. The exact nature of the storage system for flower shape, landmarks near the food, and navigational landmarks, as well as certain navigational parameters, is not yet perfectly clear. The nature of these ambiguities is explored. The possibility that some form of a synaptic selection strategy might underlie bee learning is also explored in a preliminary way