Advances in neuroscience are, at last, giving us insight into what it might be like to think like a bee. The honey bee has evolved as the consummate generalist pollinator and has become perhaps the most important insect pollinator of our food crops. Here I will talk about how honey bees think, how we know how they think, and how their long coevolution with flowers has shaped a bee’s type of intelligence. I discuss how our detailed knowledge of the mechanisms of the insect brain is shedding light on insect cognitive abilities and what types of experience a bee is capable of.
Andrew Barron is Professor of Comparative Neuroscience and Director of The Macquarie Minds and Intelligences Initiative at Macquarie University. Andrew completed his PhD in Zoology at The University of Cambridge in 1999. He has studied the honey bee ever since. He has held fellowships from the Australian Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, The Fulbright Commission and The Royal Society of London. His lab at Macquarie University studies honey bee neurobiology, specialising on understanding the incredible intelligence of bees and how such sophisticated social behaviour is possible with such a tiny brain. Half of his lab is devoted to the study of honey bee health and welfare to translate knowledge of honey bee sociobiology and neurobiology into better health outcomes for honey bees.