For their colony to survive, honey bees (Apis mellifera) must forage. [2] Successful foragers must learn and remember information about the food resource, that is, the color and shape of the flower, the amount of resource available at the site, the resource’s location, and how to navigate to the resource with respect to the hive’s location then from the resource back to the hive. Whew – that’s a lot to remember!

So, how does the bee do it? How do they capture, collect, store and recall all this information in their tiny, bee-sized brains?

Research and studies by Dr. Karl von Frisch led to amazing discoveries about the honey bee’s color vision and perception. [1] His early experiments concluded the honey bee foragers were able to distinguish visual cues – landmarks and colors – along with celestial directional cues – polarized light and position of the sun – for navigation from the hive to a resource and back to the hive. More research shed light on our understanding about the bee’s memory, indicating the forager could remember the task and time at which it was completed so that the flower is visited at the same time and place on the following day. [2]

Recent experiments have shown the visual memory of honey bees is stored pictorially. [3] Their experiential learning becomes stored as an index of flash cards that detail landmarks, colors, shapes, and locations. [4] In flight, the forager learns and memorizes views of the panorama. For her future flights along the same path, she can incorporate positional image matching – panorama – and alignment imaging matching – landmarks – to complement her existing path memories. [6] As the bee approaches a flower, be it in a garden bed, on a climbing vine or in a tree, her spatial learning happens in the three seconds before she begins sucking nectar or gathering pollen and .5 second after she finishes. [5]

But, do honey bee foragers have long term memory that enables them to recall foraging visits in days, or months, past? For example, if the colony is confined due to weather or seasonal events, would the foragers retain location and resource knowledge that allows them to return to a site? Yes, honey bees have long-term associative memory and recall! [6] They associate the location of their reward with surrounding visual and olfactory (sense of smell) signals. Again, landmarks and surrounding landscape are details included in their memory and are used and recalled during a forager’s real-time view while flying. Landmarks and colors along her route are critical as they provide context and beacons for identification and distance measurements. When her current view matches an image memory and navigational memory, her resource goal is reached.

Research suggests that associative memory in bees was considered “long-term” if it lasted longer than four days and “very long-term” memory was said to persist longer than seven days. Several rewarding visits to the same flower patch, tree in bloom or feeder are required to establish and confirm a bee’s long-term associative memory. [6] For example, a past feeding location was remembered by the colony in the early spring following the winter season!

How can this information help me be a better beekeeper?

• Create visual cues and landmarks in my apiary so foragers can more easily identify their home. For example, paint my hives or have landscaping material around the hives.
• Minimize drifting of honey bees between hives by creating uniqueness between hives in my apiary. That is, hives that are in close proximity of each other should have distinguishing characteristics unique to that hive.
• Arrange my hives so they are not in a line but, rather, in a semi-circle or set a distance apart from each other.

References and Additional Reading Material

1. “Karl von Frisch”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Frisch
2. “Honeybee memory: a honeybee knows what to do and when”: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/209/22/4420/16298/Honeybee-memory-a-honeybee-knows-what-to-do-and
3. “Honey bee cognition”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/001002779090019G
4. “Landmark learning by honey bees”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347287802075
5. “Learning and Memory in Bees”: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24955780?seq=5
6. “Observations on Long-Term Memory in Honey Bees”: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0005772X.2020.1853394?casa_token=wG2idB6ERnkAAAAA%3AWhcRtMVCnnXevQa11JOEYJlET1Xn6OpRIqz2J0aao1-1n6UUtzNbj2Ayyt53rM9XgTovqfngX2s_dg