The Mind of a Bee

April 11, 2022
Chittka, a behavioral ecology professor at Queen Mary University of London, combines cutting-edge science with a rich historical perspective in this take on what it means to be a bee. His goal, which he accomplishes remarkably well, is to dispel the belief that an individual bee is nothing more than “a mindless cog” in a hive; instead, he argues, bees have “beautifully elaborate brains.” He considers whether bees have individual personalities, experience consciousness, or dream­, and in each case, using experiments he and his coworkers have undertaken, explores the likelihood of answers in the affirmative. He demonstrates that bees can be trained to recognize faces, “have a visual processing speed five times faster than humans,” are capable of learning certain tasks that prove they comprehend the concepts of “above” and “below” quicker than primates, and can learn to use tools. Throughout, Chittka offers evolutionary explanations for many of the behaviors he describes—insects, for example, “were pre-adapted for flower color-coding hundreds of millions of years before there were any flowers.” The knowledge on offer here is as entertaining as it is edifying. Readers won’t look at bees the same way again.