Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association

By HENRY FOUNTAIN

Charles Darwin is best known for the theory of evolution, but he did much other scientific work as well. Through repeated observations of bees, for example, he proposed that bees outside the nest learn foraging tips by watching others.

Since Darwin's time, scientists have learned that a great deal of information about foraging is communicated within the hive, through a "waggle dance" in which a bee tells hive mates where to find a food source, and outside the hive through the use of scent marks.

But what of Darwin's original hypothesis? Bradley D. Worden and Daniel R. Papaj of the University of Arizona decided to test it, but they took the idea a step further. They wanted to see whether bees could learn about foraging from bees that were not from the same hive.

They tested their idea with bumblebees, which have an advantage of having small hives, often with fewer than 100 workers. With so few foraging bees, the scientists thought it might be more likely that the insects would go outside the hive for information and help.

Bees that had never fed on flowers were allowed to watch as unrelated bees (and in other experiments, artificial ones) foraged among orange or green flowers. In most cases, they chose the same color flowers that had been picked by the bees they watched. The results were published in the journal Biology Letters.

This kind of social learning, the researchers suggest, might be important to bees in one colony by providing them with information about food sources discovered by another.