Not everyone in the scientific community accepted the idea of high intelligence of bees. Critics argued that such behaviour might still be nothing more than a complex learned response shaped by the insect’s way of life. It might go beyond a simple reflex but still fall short of true thought.

Scientific experiments show that bees can learn what might be called a rule of relationship. If you offer a bee two identical shapes of different size, for example two circles, it will usually prefer the larger one. That makes sense. In nature, larger flowers often hold more nectar. So, from the bee’s point of view, bigger is often better.

But this preference can be reversed. If the smaller figure is paired with a reward and the larger one with salt solution, the bee learns to choose the smaller shape instead.

Bees are also able to notice not just single signals, but combinations of signals. One of the most difficult tasks is recognising a three-part colour combination. At this point, we begin to move very close to the question of insect intelligence.

By intellectual, or cognitive, abilities, we mean the ability to grasp not just one specific signal, but the logic of a situation, the rule that leads to success. One of the first scientists to study the intellectual abilities of bees seriously was Professor G. A. Mazokhin-Porshnyakov. Some of his most striking experiments showed that bees can form general ideas from visual objects.

In multi-stage training, bees were taught broad concepts such as triangle and quadrilateral. First, a bee was trained, by the method used by von Frisch, to tell one triangle from one quadrilateral. Then, at the next stage, the same bee was shown a new pair: again a triangle and a quadrilateral, but now of different size and with different proportions. Then the shapes were changed once more in a different way (steep triangle and trapezium), but one feature remained the same: the number of corners.

At the start of each new stage, the researchers held what they called an exam. In other words, they removed the reward from the test shapes, so that the bee could not simply follow a smell or some accidental detail connected with the food.

As expected, at the start of the second stage the bees chose randomly. Their earlier experience was not yet enough to reveal the hidden rule. But after training on the second pair, the bees were shown a third pair of new shapes. Now something interesting happened: the bees already showed a noticeable preference for the figure with the same number of angles as the one they had previously been trained to choose. By the fourth stage, with yet another new pair of figures, this preference had become very clear.

In other words, bees can behave as if they are able to count corners.

The list of tasks that bees have solved successfully is surprisingly impressive and this was not an isolated result. In later multi-stage experiments led by Professor Vladimir Kartsev, bees learned to judge the number of spots on a card, up to three, to distinguish two-coloured figures from single-coloured ones regardless of exact shape or colour combination, and to solve a range of other abstract tasks.

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IIt’s a risky gamble, but it shows something extraordinary: even in the smallest of creatures, courtship is not only about strength, but about strategy, timing, and sometimes… a well-executed lie.

Each deception is a contract with reality: fool or be fooled, lie or die. Let’s be honest: nature is a liar. A brilliant, shameless, unapologetic liar. And deception in nature isn’t just a trick - it’s a weapon, a love letter, and sometimes even a joke. If you look closely enough, you’ll see that almost every living thing cheats in one way or another. Welcome to the anatomy of the natural lie.

Deception works through channels - like sound, smell, or sight. Sometimes it’s one channel, sometimes it’s a whole orchestra of lies played together. Let’s break down the main flavours.

Tricking Eyes: Optical Camouflage.

Imagine walking through snowy woods. Suddenly - a hare leaps out in front of you. White as snow in winter, brown as earth in summer. It’s a shape-shifter, switching coats to melt into the background. The snowshoe hare doesn’t just hide - it rewrites itself into the environment.

Cuttlefish take this to the next level: they don’t just change colour, they change texture. Smooth like sand, bumpy like rock. They are living Photoshop filters, turning their whole body into a lie that fools even the smartest predators.

What If Everything We Believe About “Natural Truth” Is False?

The story of the lying spider is more than just a curious tale from biology. It’s a reminder that in nature, truth is not always what it seems - and survival often depends on bending reality.

For millions of years, male spiders faced a life-or-death dilemma: how to approach a female who is bigger, stronger, and sometimes cannibalistic. The honest strategy was clear - bring her real food, a nutritious fly or another insect, and she will be too occupied to attack. But then came the twist. Silk wrapping delayed the discovery of what’s inside, buying the male extra time. And finally, deception itself became a strategy of wrapping worthless items in silk and presenting them as a precious gift. By the time the female realises she’s been tricked, the male has already achieved his goal and slipped away.

Let’s not forget the masters of illusion - stick insects. They don’t just look like twigs, they sway in the wind like twigs. Optical deception paired with performance art. Some species of this insect evolved to imitate twigs, others to look exactly like leaves. Their disguise goes so deep that in evolution they’ve lost paired appendages - because sticking out ruins the illusion. Yet can any of them suddenly switch strategies? That’s the limit: their lies are written into their bodies.

And false visual signals? Classic move. The fangblenny fish pretends to be a toxic species - just to scare off predators. It’s harmless, but it knows how to dress dangerously.

Diagram of experiments showing how bees can use abstract ideas such as number, angles, and the difference between a single-colour and a two-colour pattern, regardless of which colours are used.:

A, discrimination between triangles and quadrilaterals; B, discrimination of the number of objects; C, generalisation by the feature of “two-colouredness”; “+”, shapes containing a reward; “−”, shapes without a reward.

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They can distinguish cards with one, two, or three spots regardless of the size of the spots or where they are placed, a kind of counting to three. They can choose a two-coloured figure from among one-coloured ones, regardless of the figure’s size, shape, or the exact colours used. They can also choose figures made from chains of outlined circles by following a rule such as the black marker is at the edge of the chain.

So a bee is not just a tiny creature chasing sweetness. It can learn smells, colours, directions, size relationships, combinations of colours, and even abstract visual rules. For an insect with such a small brain, that is a rather large achievement.

In another experiment, the reward moved back and forth between two coloured landing spots, one pinkish and one orange. Gradually the bees noticed that the food followed a regular alternation. They began to land confidently first on one circle, then on the other, according to the pattern.

This is especially striking because instinct alone should have driven them back to the place where they had last found abundant food. But the bee did not merely repeat the last successful action. She detected a rule!

What matters in all these experiments is simple. The bee was not reacting only to one fixed picture. She was responding to a more general feature that remained the same when the details changed.

That is already very close to what we call genuine cognitive activity. In such cases, the animal is not simply storing one stimulus and one response. It is extracting a rule. Not a single signal, but an abstract relation. Not just a habit, but a small piece of knowledge.

For a creature with such a tiny brain, this is a remarkable conclusion.

It suggests that bees are capable not only of training in the ordinary sense, where repeated reward builds a conditioned reflex, but also of forming simple logical chains. Perhaps a large brain is not the only route to intelligence. Sometimes another thing is enough: the need to solve real problems every day, quickly, accurately, and with minimal waste of effort.

More than instinct

A bumblebee does not experience the world as something simple or automatic, nor does it react only on colour and smell. The bee world is a structured world. A world of light mosaics and solar angles. A world of ultraviolet signs and polarised sky. A world of moving patterns, remembered landmarks, changing rules, learning and taking the decisions.

The bumblebee does not merely react to that world. She reads it in her own way, stores what matters, ignores what does not, and uses that knowledge to move through a giant landscape with astonishing skill. What is striking is not that bees think exactly like mammals, but that their behaviour begins to resemble mammalian cognition in several important ways.

First, bees do not respond only to simple signals. Like mammals, they can learn rules. They can distinguish right from left, larger from smaller, and even general categories such as triangle versus quadrilateral. That means they are not just memorising one picture. They are extracting something more abstract from experience.

Second, bees can generalise. A mammal that has learned a rule can often apply it to a new situation, and bees seem able to do the same. When they were shown new shapes, sizes, or arrangements, they could still use what they had learned before. This is a very mammal-like feature of cognition.

Third, bees show something close to flexible problem-solving. They can use smell, colour, spatial position, and visual structure together, depending on the task. Mammals also combine different kinds of information rather than relying on one fixed cue.

Fourth, bees appear able to build a kind of internal model of the world. Their navigation, recognition of three-dimensional structure, and ability to understand relationships between objects all suggest that they do not live in a world of isolated signals. In this respect, they again resemble mammals, which also interpret space as a structured environment rather than a set of disconnected sensations.

So the main conclusion is this: the cognitive abilities of bees resemble those of mammals not in scale, but in principle. Their brains are tiny, but they can still learn abstract rules, generalise, combine different kinds of information, and act as if they understand something about the logic of the situation. In other words, a bee does not think like a miniature mammal, but it can solve problems in ways that are surprisingly mammal-like.

Do Bees Know Left from Right?

One of these is the direction of a turn. Can a bee tell “right” from “left” in relation to its own body, rather than just memorising landmarks along the route?

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Bumblebees collect pollen from flowers much faster than honeybees, therefore can help much more very different plants to produce seeds. Honeybees are choosy – they like only distinct flowers. Unlike honeybees Bumblebees have especially furry coats. Such coats easily pick up pollen, and transfer it to other plants. So, one bumblebee can fertilise more plants than a honeybee in one go.

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Bumblebees live in colonies that are not as crowded as that of honeybees. Bumblebee colonies fitted into small boxes are used in greenhouses where it is not enough space for honeybees. Hives with bumblebees are now delivered all over the world for agriculture, scientific studies and education.

Where do bumblebees live?

Bumblebees make their nests in burrows where mice used to live or in the heaps of old leaves or hay, dry moss or even… wool. Some bumblebees like to live under the ground, some prefer to live above, creating their nests in the attics of our houses or holes in tree trunks.

Who are the Queens of the bumblebee kingdom?

A bumblebee Queen is the mother of the whole colony – the bumblebee’s colony is a large family. Each colony has only one Queen. Other members of the colony, called “workers”, are girls who could not develop into Queens. There are more than 200 different species of bumblebees in the world. Some species have large colonies – comprising hundreds and even thousands of bees. Some species have small colonies – not more than 50-70 workers.

There are no Kings in the bumblebee kingdom. There are bumblebee Princes, but they just appear for several days at the end of summer to marry Princesses – the Queens of a new generation. After the wedding, Princesses go to sleep in some warm caves. Such “sleeping beauties” awake only next year. When they wake up in early spring they start drinking nectar from the spring flowers. Nectar gives energy to Queens as they need to be able to dig a nest and to lay eggs while starting a new “Kingdom” colony, which may take several days. Often in spring a large buzzing bumblebee may bang into your window or even fly into your room. Just remember yourself when you first woken up in the morning. Help this awakened sleeping beauty to survive in the world that it has just entered and let it out of your house safely.

Do bumblebees have babies?

When a Queen lays eggs it covers them with wax shells, warms them and cares like a brood-hen. Bumblebee babies (larvae) look like small “worms” and they eat only pollen (a source of proteins). From time to time the Queen leaves the nest to collect some nectar for herself and pollen for future babies who will soon hatch from the eggs. When babies are ready to become adult bees, they create a cocoon and transform from a worm to a bumblebee inside this cocoon. This is a mystery and nobody sees how this miracle happens. Nature is the best “magician” in the world. Maybe you will solve this mystery when you grow up?

Do bumblebees produce honey? Is it tasty?

Queen creates the storage of honey which it makes from nectar for future members of the family. Some days later the first bumblebee girls will appear- to help the Queen building and maintaining the comb, heating the new babies, delivering nectar and pollen. The honey is very sweet, but honey pots are not that accurate as those which honeybees build. There are also extremely small workers with wings too small to fly. These bumblebees stay inside the nest all their lives helping their Mother-Queen to maintain the comb and taking care on the brood.

Do bumblebees speak?

If they live together they should cooperate. Bumblebees have their own scent-based social media. They use scent to spread the information amongst the crowd marking the flowers they visit. They help young bumblebees to hatch from the cocoons. Older bees teach youngsters how to unload pollen piles, which they bring in on their hind legs after visiting flowers. Worker-bees fly out of the nest in teams of 3-5 bees – the leader is the oldest bumblebee in a team. They touch each other by antennas and often after such a “dialogue” fly out of the nest together. Very often they work close to each other on a meadow and come back into the nest at the same time. So, maybe they “speak” by their own language similar to our sign language. Maybe you will become a biologist when you grow up and decode the bee language?

Do bumblebees sting?

Bumblebees defend themselves from predators or intruders of their nest. They are stinging insects and clearly show this by the warning colour of their coat always visible due to contrasting colours – white, black, yellow, red. One bumblebee can sting many times in its life unlike a honey-bee that stings only once and dies after this. Bumblebees never sting intentionally, only if caught, disturbed or frightened. Never catch bumblebees with bare hands. Stinging insect in a house is often a cause of panic. There is no need to run after it with a towel trying to kill it, this just provokes occasional stinging. Just switch off the lights in the room and open the window. Normally any insect would leave the dark space flying toward the light. If it is not possible to open the window, a stinger flies and bangs over the glass of the window – this barrier is invisible for all insects. Windows are the most convenient place to catch it. Take a cup, a mug or a small box and a piece of a cardboard (e.g., post-card). Then cover the insect with this cup on the glass, insert the cardboard piece between the glass and the cup. The insect is caught! Now you can take it anywhere you like – just open the cup and it will immediately fly away.

How we can give help to bumblebees?

Leave aside some areas of your lawn, do not cut the grass and do not dig or use various chemicals in the garden. Plant flowers which produces nectar and pollen – these plants are well-known and available in garden-centres. If you see that bumblebees build their nests in your garden, compost heap or loft – you are lucky, because all the fruit trees and vegetables you grow will give tasty produce. Self-pollination does not result in aromas and tastes to berries and fruits as this is achieved with the help of bumblebees. Install artificial domiciles (also known as nest-boxes) in the most suitable places. The simplest nest-box is easy to make. Have a look at the picture. The size of its internal chamber should be not less that 16x16x16 cm, but also not larger than 20x20x20 cm, the wood should be dry - preferably old timber. Do not paint it as it maybe poisonous for bees. Fill the internal volume with dry moss, wool or cotton wool to keep the bees warm. Attach the nest box on the southern or south-eastern side of a tree, house or a post. The sun shines from the South at midday, so you do not even need a compass to choose the right position of a hive. Place the hive so that small children could not reach it. The safest altitude would be around 3 metres above the ground level.

How do bumblebees and flowers help each other?

Low humming of bumblebee is the leitmotif of the summertime meadow orchestra.

Flowers and bumblebees need each other. Bumblebees move pollen from one flower to another allowing plants to produce fruits and seeds. To attract bumblebees, plants fill the flower cups with sweet nectar and use this as a bait for bees and other pollinators. Bumblebees drink nectar from flowers just like we drink soft drinks with a straw. The more they drink, the more nectar a flower produces next day. That is why bumblebees like to establish a temporal spot on a blooming bush or meadow and systematically “milk” the flowers - stimulating them to produce more and more nectar.

By buzzing, bumblebee gets covered with pollen and moves it between flowers fertilising them. Bumblebees collect pollen to feed their babies. They have pockets on their hind legs specially for pollen to transport it to the nest. But some flowers lock their pollen up in their anthers, the parts of the stamen, instead of giving it away freely. The pollen can only escape through the small holes in the anther. Bumblebees’ buzzing shakes up the flower’s anthers and pollen spew out of the holes. Potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, eggplants, cranberries and blueberries love bumblebees as they rely on such buzzing pollination.

Some flowers are deep and bumblebees with long tongues like them very much (see cards with red frames). Flowers may have medium depth (yellow framed cards) and bumblebees with medium tongues prefer to drink nectar from them. Some flowers are so shallow that bumblebees with a very short tongue lick nectar off the flower (cards with blue frames). Flowers always welcome bees – the more bees drink, the faster plants refill the flower with sweet nectar. Some bumblebees are nasty, they rob nectar by cutting the flower underneath (cards with black frames), usually their victims are deep and medium depth flowers. It means that the flowers, which are robbed, will not produce fruits or seeds. But the nectar robbers are completely harmless for shallow flowers as they can lick nectar off the flower. On the other hand, some plants can also harm the bumblebees – there are plant species, which produce poisonous nectar (cards with black frames)!

Bumblebees like spying – if they see lots of bees flying to some other direction they will join the crowd as this means that other bees have found a good meadow full of testy nectar. But you may be surprised – bumblebees are never aggressive to each other. Time is precious for them – their lives are as short as summer, so why fight if there are plenty of flowers around? So, it is peaceful competition between bumblebees which is helpful for flowers – when bees see that blooming spot is busy they just find another one.

Competition and cooperation of bees and plants work for the benefits of the whole meadow.

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