Why Bees Make Bad Decisions | The bee's mind part2
Cognitive biases, irrational choices and what it means that a bee with one million neurons makes the same mistakes you do.
A small note before we begin: The Beeâs Mind is probably the most "nerdy" series on Bees & Beyond. We are moving beyond what bees do and into how they process information, make decisions and respond to the world around them. Some questions have clear answers. Others are still being debated by scientists. As always, peer-reviewed references are linked in the end of the article.
Rational Animals and the Assumptions We Make
There is a long-standing tradition in biology where animal behaviour is viewed as inherently rational. The animal, in other words, acts in ways to maximise their fitness. They pick the food option which offers the most caloric value for their effort. They take the safest path. Any deviation from this is just noise or a function of lack of information and not a pattern.
Behavioural economics had been spending decades proving that humans behave in a consistently and predictably irrational manner. We are loss averse. We rely on irrelevant numbers. We are highly affected by the framing of the decision. We throw good money after bad because we have already spent some.
Nobody expected to find such parallels in animals with brains containing around one million neurons.
I started Bees & Beyond because bees are often reduced to two extremes: either they are magical little creatures that can do no wrong, or they are just tiny honey machines following instinct. Neither is true.
On Bees & Beyond I write about bees through science, ecology and lived experience as a beekeeper. We look at their behaviour, their challenges, their relationship with the ecosystem and the research that is changing how we understand them.
The Hungry Bee Takes More Risks
Consider that you are being given a choice between two meals. Meal one offers a small yet definite quantity of food, while meal two may offer you nothing at all or a large amount of food.
Most people will probably say that it depends.
And that is the whole point. Our decisions depend on the circumstances we are in. We are not rational calculators.
Bees are no exception.
Researchers studying bumblebees found that their choices changed depending on their nutritional state. When bees had enough food, they preferred the safer, more predictable option. But when they were hungry, they became more willing to choose the risky option that could provide a larger reward.
Itâs quite natural when you think about it. When there is plenty around, conserving is the better way to go. If resources are dwindling, risking everything might just be worth it.
This is true of humans too. Some of these tendencies have been labeled decision biases by behavioural economists, such as risk preferences that vary with the situation. But we should be careful: a bee is not thinking through a gamble like a human at a casino. She is following a nervous system shaped by millions of years of survival pressures.
What is fascinating is not that the bees make decisions that seem to be âirrational.â What is fascinating is the fact that an organism with about one million neurons does not just respond. Rather, it processes information, modifies behaviours and alters their strategy based on internal and external circumstances.
Why Bees Stick With What They Know
Consider traveling far to reach a good supply of flowers. You arrive at your destination. You harvest the nectar. You go back to the hive. But as time goes on, the flowers become less rewarding. Do you move on?
Not always, when you are a bee.
Foragers often return to familiar food sources. A route that has previously provided rewards is not always abandoned immediately when conditions change. Previous experience influences future choices.
I have noticed something similar in my own apiary. When I put out sticky frames for bees to clean, they quickly learn the location. For several days afterwards, I often see bees returning to the same spot, even when the frames are no longer there. Is this a bee making a mistake? Not necessarily.
Returning to a place that was previously rewarding is usually a sensible strategy. In nature, food sources are temporary and unpredictable. A flower patch that was empty today might produce nectar again tomorrow. A location that has provided food before is worth checking.
But it shows something important about bee decision-making: bees are not only responding to what is happening in the present moment. Their previous experiences influence what they do next.
In humans, we sometimes describe a similar pattern as the sunk cost effect: continuing with something because we have already invested time or effort into it.
Whether bees experience anything like a human sunk cost bias is unclear. A bee is not thinking, âI have already flown this far, so I must continue.â Her behaviour may instead reflect a useful survival strategy: familiar information is often valuable and changing course also has costs.
This is one reason honey bees have evolved ways for information to compete. A successful foraging route can recruit new followers, but new discoveries can also spread through the waggle dance system.
The hive is not controlled by one perfect decision-maker. It is a constantly changing information network, made up of thousands of individuals making decisions with incomplete information.
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When the First Experience Shapes the Next One
Our first encounter sets the stage for future encounters. In humans, it is referred to as anchoring. This is where our first experience, impression, or expectation serves as the benchmark for evaluating anything we encounter after that.
It seems that bees have a tendency to do the same thing. Imagine a bee discovering an exceptionally rich patch of flowers. Every visit brings a generous reward. She learns the location, the scent, the colours and that this is a place worth returning to.
Then the flowers begin to fade. The next patch she visits still offers nectar, but not as much as before. Should she stay, or keep looking?
Research suggests that previous experience influences how bees evaluate new opportunities. A bee that has recently foraged from an exceptionally rewarding flower patch may respond differently to an average one because her expectations have been shaped by what came before.
Most of the time, this is an advantage. Remembering where the best food was yesterday is far more efficient than starting every search from scratch.
But in a changing environment, even a useful shortcut can sometimes slow adaptation. Whether this is exactly the same as anchoring in humans is still debated. A bee is not consciously comparing todayâs flowers with yesterdayâs. Instead, her nervous system is using previous experience to guide future decisions.
The same memory that helps a bee return to an excellent food source can also make it take longer to recognise when that source is no longer the best option.
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The Optimism Experiments
The research from Article 1, on pessimistic cognitive bias in stressed bees, has a mirror image.
When bees are in a positive state, well-fed, unstressed and in a rich environment, they show the opposite pattern. They are more likely to interpret ambiguous situations positively, approaching uncertain stimuli with a greater expectation of reward.
This is not the same as saying a bee is optimistic in the human sense. We cannot know exactly what a bee experiences internally. But we can measure that her behaviour changes depending on her internal state.
A beeâs expectations, choices and responses are influenced by factors such as stress, nutrition and previous experience. This is similar to the way emotional states influence decision-making in humans.
The question of whether a bee experiences something like optimism is part of the larger question of insect subjective experience. What we do know is that bee behaviour is not fixed or purely automatic. Her decisions are shaped by what is happening inside her as well as what is happening in the world around her.
After the paywall, we look into why these "bad decisions" are actually part of what makes bee intelligence work. We will break down how thousands of imperfect individual decisions combine into a hive that can adapt, correct themself and solve problems collectively.
