Buzzing fast and amazing decisions! Why do bees outcompete us?

Young people passionate about science! Today we are going to talk about those little flying workers that leave us speechless: honey bees! It turns out that these little critters have a special gift for making quick and accurate decisions, much more than us humans! And that, my colleagues, is no small thing. Imagine having a brain smaller than a sesame seed, but being able to assess effort, risk, and reward like a champion. If they were human, they would have the gold medal in the decision-making Olympics. Who needs supercomputers to think fast when you have the brain of a bee?

It turns out that a group of scientists, led by Professor Andrew Barron of Macquarie University in Sydney and his team members Dr HaDi MaBouDi, Neville Dearden and Professor James Marshall of the University of Sheffield, have been investigating how these little buggers can make such brilliant decisions. Bees, just like us, also need to evaluate options and decide on the ideal flower to find nectar and take it back to the hive, but for them, time is money, literally! While flying, they have to avoid surprise attacks; and when they land, they must watch out for spiders disguised as hungry flowers. How hard it is to be a bee these days!

Scientists gave 20 super-smart bees VIP training, teaching them to recognize different colors of “flower discs” and what kind of drink they would have, whether it was finger-licking sweet nectar or something bitter and nasty. Then, they were sent to a mysterious garden full of “flowers” that only had water. What a crossroads! The result was surprising, if the bees were clear that a flower would give them food, boom! They landed on it in the blink of an eye, in just 0.6 seconds, but if they weren’t sure, they hesitated more and it took them around 1.4 seconds to make up their minds. Just like when you don’t know whether to risk the last piece of pizza or leave it for later!

The craziest thing was that the team of scientists created a smart computer that imitated the brain of bees and guess what, it looked an awful lot like the design of a real bee! It seems that nature is the best engineer in the universe, so if you ever thought that bees were just buzzing around collecting nectar, you were wrong! They are master decision makers, and we can learn a lot from them to improve our own artificial intelligence. Can you imagine having robots with bee-inspired brains? It would be like having super drones exploring Mars like it’s nothing!

Well, I hope this info has left you with honey on your lips and your brain buzzing with excitement. Bees give us great lessons, even if they are only the size of a grain of rice, be curious and learn from everything around us. Until next time, science lovers! 🐝🚀