Imagine a bee that rolled a ball very far to a marked location, then climbed onto the ball to get to a flower that was blocked by a few walls! A study made on June 16th in Finland showed that bees are able think in much more complicated ways than most people believed.

Scientists learned that animals can solve problems that they have never seen before, which is called “insight” by scientists. In an experiment where a chimpanzee was left in a room with sticks and a banana that was out of reach, it stacked boxes to reach the banana. Scientists did a similar experiment with bees.

Scientists from Finland decided to see if bees had the same “insight.“ A bee was trapped in an arena that is too small to fly in, with a fake flower (sugary treat) and a foam ball. The flower was a reward for the bee, and the bee practiced rolling around on the ball.

Then, that foam ball was put on top of the blue fake flower, which taught the bees that the ball can roll.

After that, the blue flower was moved to the top of the arena, and multiple small holes were drilled at the bottom of the arena. There was one hole right below the flower. The bees were meant to roll the boll into the hole under the flower, then climb up the ball to reach the flower. About 73% of the bees solved the puzzle. Even the younger bees with less experience could solve the puzzle.

Finally, scientists hid the flower behind a wall to make sure the bees were not just getting lucky, so the bees are not able to roll the ball into the correct hole by accident. Most bees succeeded in solving the puzzle.

Because bees have insight, they can come up with creative solutions to solve puzzles they have never seen before, despite their small brain size.