Secrets of the Bees: Revealing the Sneaky Genius of Nature’s Brightest Thinkers

We’ve long known how important bees are as little pollinators. But did you know how smart they are, too? In this fascinating piece, Hannah Nordhaus explores what experiments are being conducted to test how bees solve problems. Her words are complemented by beautiful photos and videos taken by Karine Aigner—and you’ll be amazed watching a bee roll a ball over, stand on it, and extract a “sweet treat.” Yet another reminder that we need to look after these remarkable creatures.

Over the past few decades, scientists have been learning more and more about the ways that bees figure things out. They’ve studied how honeybee foragers fan out across miles of unfamiliar terrain in their six-week adult lifespan, navigating by sunlight and memory as they visit thousands of flowers to retrieve nectar for their colonies. They’ve followed bees back to their nests and seen how they dance to tell others where the best flowers are, and how they make collective decisions to swarm and relocate their homes.