Problem solving by worker bumblebees Bombus impatiens (Hymenoptera: Apoidea)

Abstract

During foraging, worker bumblebees are challenged by simple to complex tasks. Our goal was to determine whether bumblebees could successfully accomplish tasks that are more complex than those they would naturally encounter. Once the initial training to successfully manipulate a simple, artificial flower was completed, the bees were either challenged with a series of increasingly difficult tasks or with the most difficult task without the opportunity for prior learning. The first experiment demonstrated that the bees learned to slide or lift caps that prevented their access to the reinforcer sugar solution through a series of tasks with increasing complexity: moving one cap either to the right or to the left, or lifting it up. The second experiment demonstrated that the bees learned to push balls of escalating masses (diameters 1 and 1.27 cm) from the access to the hidden rewarding (sugar syrup) reservoir of artificial flowers. In both experiments, when bees with experience with only the simplest task (i.e. an artificial flower without a barrier to the reinforcer) were presented next with the most complex or difficult task, they failed. Only by proceeding through the series of increasingly difficult tasks were they able to succeed at the most difficult. We also noted idiosyncratic behaviours by individual bees in learning to succeed. Our results can be interpreted within the context of Skinnerian shaping and possibly scaffold learning.

Food restriction and threat of predation affect visual pattern choices by flower-naïve bumblebees

“…Contemporary research topics in bee-cognition include visual categorization (Benard, Stach, & Giurfa, 2006;Dyer, 2012), timing (Boisvert & Sherry, 2006;Craig, Varnon, Sokolowski, Wells, & Abramson, 2014), spatial cognition (Brown & Demas, 1994;Cheng, 2000), numerical cognition (Pahl, Si, & Zhang, 2013), concept learning (Brown & Sayde, 2013;Giurfa, Zhang, Jenett, Menzel, & Srinivasan, 2001;Gould, 2002), picture-object correspondence (Thompson & Plowright, 2014) and problem solving (Mirwan & Kevan, 2014). Particularly relevant here is research on social learning and cognition (reviewed by Sherry & Strang, 2014), which has been neglected until recently (Dukas, 2008).…”

Maze Navigation and Route Memorization by Worker Bumblebees (Bombus impatiens (Cresson) (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

“…SC 4 compared the learning curves by repeated measures ANOVA. SC 5 compared by the exponent of the power function model fitting the learning curve (Ritter and Schooler 2002) and SC 6 compared the ZPDs (Zone of Proximal Development) (after Vygotsky 1987) quantifies learning rates as the difference between a) the time taken to solve a problem at first encounter and b) the time taken after the solution to the problem has been learned (Mirwan and Kevan 2014) for each bee according to its colony of origin.…”

The establishment and transmission of novel foraging techniques indicates a capacity for culture in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris)

“…The demonstrator’s preferences spread throughout these groups and were maintained long-term, even when the alternative behaviour was discovered, and even though the two variants were entirely arbitrary. Thus, to investigate the capacity for culture and its dynamics in bumblebees, we designed two-option puzzle box feeders informed by previous work on bumblebee problem-solving (27), that replicated those used to investigate arbitrary traditions in great tits. We then developed an open diffusion protocol that allowed the spread of box-opening to be recorded, and seeded colonies of bumblebees with demonstrators trained to perform one of the two possible behavioural variants.…”