Related topics: plos one · insects · plants · flowering plants · ants

A caffeine buzz helps bees learn to find specific flowers

There's nothing like a shot of espresso when you need to get some studying done—and now, it seems like bees learn better with a jolt of their favorite caffeine-laced nectar, too. In a paper published July 28 in the journal ...

Engineers may learn from bees for optimal honeycomb designs

Perfect hexagonal structures inspired by honeycombs in bee nests are widely used to build everything from airplane wings, boats, and cars, to skis, snowboards, packaging and acoustic dampening materials.

Social distancing in nature

Forager ants do it, vampire bats do it, guppies do it, and mandrills do it. Long before humans learned about and started "social distancing due to COVID-19," animals in nature intuitively practiced social distancing when ...

Unexpected similarity between honey bee and human social life

Bees and humans are about as different organisms as one can imagine. Yet despite their many differences, surprising similarities in the ways that they interact socially have begun to be recognized in the last few years. Now, ...

Gut bacteria is key to bee ID

For a honey bee, few things are more important than recognizing your nestmates. Being able to tell a nestmate from an invader could mean the difference between a honey-stocked hive and a long, lean winter.

Group genomics drive aggression in honey bees

Researchers often study the genomes of individual organisms to try to tease out the relationship between genes and behavior. A new study of Africanized honey bees reveals, however, that the genetic inheritance of individual ...

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