“BEE don’t kill my vibe! BEE don’t kill my vibe!”
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
A good mood is contagious, right? Is that what makes us human?
Or is that what makes us… bees?!
Enter Jose Romero-Gonzalez and team at Southern Medical University.
They studied to see if bees could get a “buzz” off of their peers, like we do.
They had bumblebees forage from artificial flowers, filled with an artificial nectar.
Major dopamine hit. Afterward, these bees kept approaching sugarless ‘control’ flowers.
Again and again.
Even bees who only got to watch other bees checked out the empty flowers too.
This study shows groupthink goes way beyond Dad’s facebook page.
Talk about a hive mentality!
Reference: Romero-González, J. E., Zhuo, Z., Chen, L., Peng, C., Solvi, C., & Peng, F. (2025). Positive affective contagion in bumble bees. Science (New York, N.Y.), 390(6771), 377–380. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adr0216