But how exactly do they count when they encounter a greenhouse in a park, park or garden?

This new study focused on finding out whether bees trained in specific counting know whether to choose a flower garden based on the number of flowers in the garden. Results showed that bees could recognize the difference between groups with 1 and 4 flowers, but could not distinguish 4 from 5.

Basically, they cannot distinguish between groups of 2 or more flowers. Or to say the counting of bees is 1 and a few.

The ability to distinguish between two groups of numbers is vitally important for an animal, because it involves activities that ensure their survival. These activities include: comparing feed sources - selecting larger quantities of feed; power interaction - choosing to avoid conflicts with larger numbers of groups; and avoid predators - opt to stay among groups of individuals of the same species to reduce the risk of being eaten.

Humans are becoming more and more aware of the animals’ ability to discriminate. Primate and other mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds and fish all show their ability to distinguish numbers in their daily activities. For example, fish use this ability to not separate from the herd, but to stay with other individuals to reduce the risk of being eaten.

However, we still have very little knowledge about how insects distinguish and choose based on quantity.

Bees choose where to eat?

Honey bees evaluate a flower garden based on a number of factors such as smell, color, shape and size.

Normally, every flight foraging, honey bees visit about 150 flowers to bring back nectar or pollen. For a honey bee, having a large number of flowers in the same area means less energy than having to fly to multiple flowerbeds where each carpet has fewer flowers.

Flowers in the backyard - which carpet would you choose if you were a bee?

To test whether each honey bee can distinguish between numbers, the researchers used clusters with different numbers of fake flowers. They had the bees identify each pair of inflorescences to compare from easy to difficult, such as 1 with 12 and 4 with 5. 

The layout for conducting the experiment (left) and the quantity comparison (right). Honey bees can naturally distinguish between 1 and 12, 1 with 4 and 1 with 3 flowers, but other pairs of numbers are indistinguishable. Honey bees are trained to understand a yellow dot related to sugar water before choosing to compare the number of flowers.

Interestingly, even though we previously knew that trained bees could distinguish between complex number groups and could also learn addition or subtraction, but if unexpectedly given inflorescences they were very differentiated. least. They can only distinguish 1 from 3, 1 with 4, and 1 with 12, in which they prefer clusters with more flowers.

A honey bee flies toward the three flowers.

Between pairs with 1 and many flowers, they distinguish well, but the pairs that each one has 2 or more flowers are confused. The choice of honey bee feeding grounds is based not only on their ability to distinguish numbers but also on how they identify a flower or a cluster of flowers.