#Surprisingly Simple Logic Explains Amazing Bee Abilities Bumblebees and Pavlov's dogs have something in common:
A new study finds that bees use simple logical steps to learn from other bees which flowers hold the sweetest nectar.
Scientists have observed long that bees copy other bees when learning the best spots to forage.
Just by watching another bee forage through a screen a bumblebee could go on to pick the sweetest flowers on its own Dawson said.
It was such a complex behavior for a little bee to perform and that's why we thought there might be something a lot more simple behind
Learning to bee Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov became famous in the early 1900s for discovering that dogs could be conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell they associated with food.
and her colleagues thought that bees might be taking a similar series of logical steps.
To test the idea they first showed bees a scene: six feeding platforms three of which were occupied by model bees that looked
as if they were foraging. The platforms were colorless and could only be distinguished by whether or not a bee was hanging around.
Next the bees got to visit these platforms themselves. In some cases the model bees were marking platforms filled with sweet sugar water.
In other cases the model bees were perched on platforms filled with quinine the ingredient that makes tonic water bitter.
This taught the bees to associate their comrades with either a sweet reward or a bitter taste.
Logical leaps Next the same bees observed another foraging area through a screen. This time they saw six colored flowers either three orange and three green or three blue and three yellow.
All flowers of one color were occupied by model bees. After 10 minutes the researchers removed the model bees
and swapped around the placement of each color. They then let the trained bees into the foraging area
and watched what they did. Those bees that had learned previously that other bees were linked with sweets made a beeline to the color where the model bees had been.
Unsurprisingly the bees that had learned that other bees spent time around bitter quinine avoided the colors previously occupied by model bees.
Bees that hadn't gone through the initial training task tried each color equally. The study indicates that a complex behavior that we've seen in bees is actually just a result of associations Dawson said.
Lots of animals from sea slugs up to primates learn by copying she said and the researchers hope to learn
if the same simple logical leaps are behind this ability. The study is detailed today (April 4) in the journal Current Biology.
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#Sweet Disguise: Chocolate-Covered Elephant Ivory Seized in Macau Ivory poachers go to sometimes-absurd lengths to smuggle prized pieces of elephant tusks across borders.
since colony collapse disorder has decimated local bee populations. No use crying over it the white powder that blanketed a New zealand highway
Usually it is to gather honey or some are helping canopy researchers. They're finding a way to make money by climbing their trees.
Hoping that she would someday become a therapy dog Honey's owner took the dog to meet a person in a wheelchair.
Without warning the person quickly moved the chair unaware of how close Honey's paws were to the wheels.
The wheelchair that was once a neutral stimulus caused Honey to react with panic when she saw it.
When Honey learned to avoid or escape wheelchairs operant conditioning (learned behavior had taken place. How classical conditioning can benefit dog owners As an example of classical conditioning related to a positive experience
if Honey had developed not a fear of wheelchairs and they were a neutral stimulus Honey's owner could have reached into her treat bag
and given Honey a preferred treat every time they were in the presence of a wheelchair.
If Honey got to the point where she would salivate as a result of seeing a wheelchair classical (respondent) conditioning had taken place.
Pairing the dog's favorite treat with the object while it is still a neutral stimulus
#What Bees Don't Know Can Help Them: Measuring Insect Indecision (Op-Ed) This article was published originally atâ The Conversation.
Last week my colleague Andrew Barron and I published results investigating uncertainty monitoring in honey bees and found that bees avoided difficult tasks that they lacked the information to solve.
First we built a test apparatus with two chambers that bees could fly into and drink from one of two targets.
If the bees landed on the target located above a black bar they would find sucrose a rewarding sugary solution.
As you d expect bees became rather good at determining which target was situated above the black bar.
But we then made things a bit harder for the bees. We varied the difficulty of the tests by placing the targets closer to the black bar.
Bees were allowed also to fly from the first chamber to the second without picking a target
If bees were capable of monitoring their uncertainty they should opt out of the more difficult trials.
Bees opted out more often on trials where the targets were closer to the black bars.
On some trials bees would be able to opt out but on other trials they would not
If bees were monitoring their uncertainty they would be expected to do better on difficult tests when they had the ability to opt out.
When forced to make a decision bees had to guess if they weren t sure of the answer.
Bees picked the correct target more often when they could opt out. These results are similar to those found with primates.
So it seems that bees have the ability to monitor their uncertainty right? Well maybe.
Although opting out was not directly rewarding bees could have associated opting out with avoidance of punishment (drinking a bitter solution)
The associative explanation would have to assume that bees could tell the difference between difficult and easy trials and weight them differently.
It may be just as simple for a bee (or any other animal) brain to compute uncertainty as it would be to classify and associate outcomes.
Whether an insect monitors uncertainty or only appears to honey bees are able to selectively avoid making decisions
Bees and other insects show little interest in the pawpaw flower so hand-pollination is required sometimes.)
#What Is Honey? Honey: You drink it in your tea and spread it on your bread but what is honey really?
A thick golden liquid produced by industrious bees honey is made using the nectar of flowering plants
and is saved inside the beehive for eating during times of scarcity. But how do bees make honey?
Nectar a  sugary liquid is extracted from flowers using a bee's long tube-shaped tongue
and stored in its extra stomach or crop. While sloshing around in the crop the nectar mixes with enzymes that transform its chemical composition
When a honeybee returns to the hive it passes the nectar to another bee by regurgitating the liquid into the other bee's mouth.
To get all that extra water out of their honey bees set to work fanning the honeycomb with their wings in an effort to speed up the process of evaporation.
When most of the water has evaporated from the honeycomb the bee seals the comb with a secretion of liquid from its abdomen which eventually hardens into beeswax.
Away from air and water honey can be stored indefinitely providing bees with the perfect food source for cold winter months.
But bees aren't the only ones with a sweet tooth. Humans bears badgers and other animals have long been raiding the winter stores of their winged friends to harvest honey.
Honey's color taste aroma and texture vary greatly depending on the type of flower a bee frequents.
Clover honey for example differs greatly from the honey harvested from bees that frequent a lavender field.
#What is the'Birds and the Bees'?'The phrase the birds and the bees is a metaphor for explaining the mechanics of reproduction to younger children relying on imagery of bees pollinating
and eggs hatching to substitute for a more technical explanation of sexual intercourse. It is a way of deflecting the inevitable question that every parent dreads:
and bees reproduce. The connection between human sexuality and eggs and pollination is vague which can cause some confusion among curious children.
Though there are some variations the story typically involves bees pollinating flowers symbolizing male fertilization and the birds laying eggs
How Bees Do it There are quite a few allusions to the phrase in literature and song. One of the early references to this bird and bees as a euphemism for reproduction is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1825 poem oework Without Hope:
   All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair    The bees are stirring birds are on the wing   Â
And Winter slumbering in the open air    Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
   And I the while the sole unbusy thing    Nor honey make nor pair nor build nor sing.
Another commonly cited use of the phrase is American naturalist John Burroughs 1875 set of essays Birds and Bees Sharp Eyes and other Papers.
and bees in a section of the publication The Story of Life which was widely distributed between 1893 and 1930.
and bees gathering honey from the flowers. Related: Animal Sex: How Birds Do it A more direct reference can be found in Cole porter's lyrics to the 1928 song Let's Do it.
And that's why birds do it bees do it    Even educated fleas do it    Let's do it let's fall in love The phrase also appeared in a 1939 issue of the Freeport Journal Standard:
he knows about the birds and the bees. In consequence French films are made on a basis of artistic understanding that does not hamper the story.
A more modern reference to the phrase occurred on The Simpsons. The episode includes a scene has 10-year-old Bart Simpson remarking to his friend Milhouse The sun is out birds are singing bees are trying to have sex with them as is my understanding..
Not all flowers produce nectar and bees avoid those that don't by learning to recognize the odors of nectar-bearing flowers.
whether nitrogen oxides a group of highly reactive gases released by diesel combustion are capable of altering floral odors to an extent that would dampen a bee's ability to recognize desirable flowers.
The team then introduced the bee groups into the test chambers to determine how the contamination affected smell recognition which they gauged based on
whether the bees extended their proboscis the strawlike mouthpart they use to suck up nectar within 10 seconds of exposure to the odor in the study chambers.
If the bee did not extend its proboscis then it was presumed to have lost the ability to recognize the smell.
The team found that bees were much less likely to extend their proboscis within 10 seconds in the contaminated chamber than the uncontaminated chamber.
A bee has far poorer recognition of an altered floral mix said study co-author Tracey Newman.
The bee needs to learn the unadulterated version and if the bee has learned it it will then struggle with the version that has been altered chemically.
Though the researchers focused on the effects of nitrogen oxide gases on floral odors other highly reactive contaminants such as naturally occurring ozone gas
and bees new research reveals. The insects likely rely on croc tears for salt. The discovery was made
and filmed butterflies and bees fluttering about the corners of the eyes of a spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus) a crocodilian that can reach up to 8. 2 feet (2. 5 meters) long that was basking on the riverbank.
These new findings support a 2012 report of a bee sipping the tears of a yellow-spotted river turtle in Ecuador's Yasunã National park. Similar findings were seen with butterflies drinking the tears of yellow-spotted river
and the bee de la Rosa said. However I've seen these bees approach river turtles
and the turtles are not as tolerant or pleased shaking their heads and eventually even jumping back on the water.
#Bees'Salt-Sensing Feet Explain Swimming pool Mystery The first-ever investigation of the honeybee ability to taste with their front feet may explain a persistent bee mystery:
Now scientists find that bees have taste receptors on their feet that are so sensitive to salt that they even dwarf the bees'capacity to taste sweets.
The solution to the bee pool mystery was just one of the researchers'findings. They also learned that bees don't sense bitter tastes with their feet.
The results are important for understanding the honeybee sensory system and potentially for figuring out how pesticides might harm these important pollinators and critical lab models for cognitive research.
Sweet foot Thanks to its impressive navigational skills the honeybee (Apis mellifera) is a model organism used by researchers to understand the mechanisms of learning and memory.
Many scientists had investigated the bee's sense of sight and smell Giurfa said but one sense had been left out.
Practically nobody looked at the sense of taste in bees which is so important for them he told Live Science.
Over the course of two years Sanchez captured bees and stimulated their front feet with a variety of tasty (and not-so-tasty) solutions from sweet to bitter.
Like other insects bees don't confine their sense of taste to their mouths. They also taste using their antennae and the surfaces of their feet.
Sanchez measured the bees'reactions by observing whether or not they stuck out their tongues a tasty substance elicits a protrusion of the proboscis
Salt-seeking bees Unsurprisingly given bees'need for nectar the insects'feet are incredibly sensitive to sugar.
The bees need salt for their own metabolic processes and to carry back to their hives to help larvae develop Giurfa said.
Thus homeowners'trendy saltwater pools attract bees like flies to honey. Finally the study researchers found that bees don't seem to sense bitterness.
They don't retract their tongues in response to the taste nor do their cells show an electrical reaction to bitter substances Giurfa said.
because bees are such an important species to the understanding of the neural basis of memory and learning.
But the research may also benefit the bees themselves. Bee colonies worldwide are experiencing die offs a mysterious phenomenon called colony collapse disorder.
Pesticides and other environmental contaminants are suspects and researchers have turned their attention to how pesticides might affect the honeybee navigation system memory and brain function.
He and his colleagues would like to experiment with exposing bee feet to miniscule amounts of pesticide to see how the cells respond.
With respect to pollinators such as bees it was up to 50%more. However the magnitude of the effect varies between different types of organism and between fields growing different crops.
and found the bees were capable of staying afloat at remarkably inhospitable elevations. The team traveled to a mountain range in western China and collected six male bumblebees of the species Bombus impetuosus at about 10660 feet (3250 meters.
Gallery of Colorful Insect Wings The researchers placed the bees in clear sealed boxes and experimentally adjusted the oxygen levels
All of the bees were capable of flying in conditions equivalent to 13000 feet (4000 m) and some even made it past 30000 feet (9000 m) the height of the peak of Mount everest the team reported Tuesday (Feb 4) in the journal Biology Letters.
and lower oxygen concentrations of high elevations hypothesizing that the bees would either need to beat their wings faster
The researchers found that instead of beating their wings faster the bees increased the angle at
whether bees living at lower base elevations are also capable of flying at simulated high elevations
#Bee Fossils Provide Rare Glimpse into Ice age Environment A new analysis of rare leafcutter-bee fossils excavated from the Rancho La Brea Tar pits in Southern California has provided valuable insight
In the new study researchers used high-resolution micro-computed tomography (CT) scanners to analyze two fossils of leafcutter-bee nests excavated from the pits.
and the physical features of the bee pupae (stage of development where the bee transforms into an adult from a larva within the leafy nests
and cross-referencing their data with environmental niche models that predict the geographic distribution of species the scientists determined their Ice age specimens belonged to Megachile gentilis a bee species that still exists today.
Leafcutter bees Unlike honeybees and other colony-dwelling bees leafcutter bees are solitary. To reproduce females build small cylindrical nest cells made of carefully chosen leaves and sometimes flower petals.
The bees build these multilayered nest cells in secure locations near the ground such as under the bark of dead trees in stems
and only later after the two cells were separated accidentally did people suspect they might be bees.
When Holden first came across the fossils in NHM she immediately thought they were leafcutter bees
and one female She decided to try to identify the bees'species. I had read some of the big literature that said leafcutter bees aren't really identifiable by their nest cells Holden said.
'Holden paired up with leafcutter-bee expert Terry Griswold an entomologist with the U s. Department of agriculture to try to pinpoint characteristics that distinguish between the nest cells of different leafcutter bee species. Piecing the evidence together The researchers
and examined micro-CT scans of the bee nest cells and discovered there are some differences in the way different leafcutter bees make their cells.
Usually the oblong leaves that form the side walls of the cell are bent into a cup at the bottom
This finding narrowed down the possible bee species. The size of the cells and their vegetative components such as the lack of flower petals and the type of leaves included further constrained the species list.
and ensure the bees didn't belong to the next-best-candidate species M. onobrychidis the team turned to environmental niche models.
The bees didn't simply fall into a tar pit; they were placed into the ground purposefully. The researchers believe the mother bee planted her babies near an asphalt pipe
and the pupae became embalmed in an asphalt-rich matrix when oil soaked into the sediment around the pipe.
and her team concluded that the leafcutter bees lived in a low-elevation moist environment during the Late Pleistocene.
In February the Fresno Bee newspaper reported that planned water releases for the restoration have been put on hold until at least 2015.
Bees African elephants belt out distinct alarm calls to specify which kind of threat is approaching in the wild be it humans or bees a new study shows.
but these threats include people who poach the animals for their ivory and swarms of angry bees
A powerful swarm of bees could even kill a thin-skinned calf. Researchers had discovered already that elephants produce a rumble like a gravelly baritone growl in response to the threat of bees.
What's more elephants will flee when they hear a recording of this rumble even
when there's no sign of bees around according to that 2010 study in PLOS ONE. Elephant Images:
and the sounds of angry bees triggered uneasy and vigilant behavior in the elephants; the animals started sniffing they lifted their heads up
but only in response to the noises of angry bees likely to knock any insects away from their face.
There were slight differences in the formant frequencies of the rumbles in response to bees and the rumbles associated with humans the researchers said.
Studying the Bugs in Bees This Behind the Scenes article was provided to Live Science in partnership with the National Science Foundation.
They made the journey in a minivan with a pet cat and 100000 bees. That was probably the most heroic event in our beekeeping saga to date says evolutionary biologist Nancy Moran a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies symbiosis particularly among multicellular hosts and microbes.
We didn't want to be without bees upon arrival in Texas and it wasn't a good time of year to start new colonies.
The bees chauffeured by graduate student Waldan Kwong and postdoctoral fellow Gordon bennett traveledin boxes nailed shut with duct tape over the cracks between the boxes
so they couldn't fly around in the minivan and wire mesh over the front
Bees are less excitable when it's cooler. At night they waited to park the minivan until after dark
and then opened the windows so the bees didn't overheat in the closed space.
It seemed unlikely that anyone would try to steal something from a van full of bees.
The bees arrived in Austin with no problems and now live on top of a building on campus where their main forage might be drops of soda on discarded cans around campus says Moran who for many years studied the maternally transmitted symbionts of aphids
and other sap-feeding insects but has expanded in recent years to bees. Symbionts are organisms that coexist
Understanding the gut microbes in bees Today the broad aim of her research is to understand the diversity
Interactions within the bee colonies are the basis for transfer of the symbionts to newly emerged adult bees.
Apis mellifera the honeybee has a distinctive set of about eight symbiotic bacterial species some of which occur in other Apis species and in the related Genus bombus bumblebees.
Bees of course are critically important ecologically and economically particularly in agriculture where honeybees pollinate an estimated $15 billion worth of agricultural products in the United states including more than 130 fruits according to the U s. Department of agriculture.
In recent years however there has been increasing concern over rampant bee colony losses dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder and the overall health of bees in general.
and function in the bee gut microbial community system some bumblebees are becoming rare and have shrunken ranges.
or could microbiota be preserved in a way that helps bees thrive? A big part of the problem with bee health is undoubtedly the decreasing availability of diverse floral resources
and possibly nesting sites in the case of bumblebees she adds. But exposure to toxins and to diseases also play a part based on numerous studies.
So we hope that we find something useful for bees. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is funding her work with $2006416 over five years awarded in 2010.
Antibiotic resistance Moran's research has revealed that bacteria in the guts of honeybees are highly resistant to the preventive antibiotic tetracycline probably the result of decades of exposure to it because of its use by beekeepers to prevent bacterial diseases.
but the genes were largely absent in bees from countries where such antibiotic use is banned.
In the bee system even though transmission is mostly within colonies the symbionts are much more likely to undergo horizontal transmission she says meaning transmission among members of the same species that are not parent and child.
It turns out that in the United states antibiotics have been used widely in beekeeping since the 1950s mostly tetracycline.
Now we are finding that strains of the bee gut microbiota show a large set of`accessory'genes and functions.
and that different bee species and different colonies within a species seem to have different strains of symbionts.
and Gilliamella but one bumble bee species seemed to sometimes miss being inoculated she says. The'right'symbionts are simply absent from some individuals.
And we can start to understand how the normal microbiota interacts with disease agents that infect bees.
The temperament of bees When it's time to start new colonies Moran's lab orders bees from different places around the country
but favors northern California bees because of their very sweet personalities meaning they stay calm when the hive is opened
Feisty bees are touchy and prone to attack when someone just gets close to the hive.
We had some Texas bees but they were a bit feisty perhaps they did not like being plopped down in New england before she moved to Austin.
Lab technician Kim Hammond cares for the bees and has developed into a master beekeeper Moran says.
In fact maybe she's too good#e can't recover the disease organisms that most beekeepers complain about even
She keeps the bee colonies very healthy and we sometimes cannot detect pathogens that are generally common.
In some of our experiments we want to infect bees with pathogens to see if the microbiota protects against pathogens.
In those cases we have to go to other beekeepers to try and find the disease organisms.
New to bee research and wanting to learn the basics of beekeeping Moran actually kept several colonies in her own yard for several years.
But I have to admit I am afraid of stings she says. Yes I did get stung a few times.
Of course we wear bee suits. In the lab we mostly work with young worker bees which do not sting much plus we have contained them.
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