Bumblebee Hives Can Progress Through Shared Learning

Bumblebee hives provide fascinating insights into animal behaviour in groups. Find out how a new study suggests that bees can learn complex, multi-step tasks through social interaction.

I can still remember being fascinated by bumblebees as a small child. They would buzz around, pollinating the lilac bushes beside the house where I grew up.

In my youth, I encountered lots of bees, either on camping trips or working in construction during summer breaks from school. Oddly enough, despite all that contact, I’ve never been stung by a bee.

Of course, one of the fascinating things about bees is their social interaction. Bumblebee hives, or colonies, involve each bee playing a specialized role in building and maintaining the hive, gathering and storing food, raising the young, and protecting the queen bee.

Dr. Alice Bridges Studied How Bees Learn From One Another

Dr. Alice Bridges earned her doctorate in psychology at Queen Mary University of London’s Bee Sensory and Behavioural Ecology Lab. She studied how bumblebee hives learn from one another and build on their shared knowledge over time.