Can you teach a bee to play soccer?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Bees are known to be well organized. They’re expert team players! But can they solve problems on the fly?
Enter Akshaye Bhambore and team at the University of Oulu. They built a maze with two hallways. Bees were given a ball and a choice to go either right or left. At the end of one way, a flower was stuck to the ceiling.
What did they do? Seventy-five percent rolled the ball to the correct side and climbed it to reach the flower!! Talk about problem-solving!
So you can teach a bee to play soccer! You just have to wait for it… show them the honey!
Akshaye A. Bhambore et al., Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees. Science 392,1046-1049(2026). DOI:10.1126/science.ady1618