Initially, the stunned bees tried to push only the red tab – without moving the blue tab first – and simply left.
To motivate the bees, the researchers added a sweet substance at the end of this first stage, which was gradually removed as they mastered the process.
The demonstrators were then paired with some new “naïve” bees, who watched the demonstrators solve the puzzle before moving on themselves.
Five of the 15 naïve bees completed the puzzle rapidly – without requiring a reward after the first step.
“We were very surprised,” Bridges said. “When it first happened we were all going crazy,” he said.
Alex Thornton, a professor of cognitive development at the University of Exeter, UK, who was not involved in the research, acknowledged that it was a small sample size.
“But the point is clear – the task was exceptionally difficult to learn alone, yet some bees could solve it through social learning,” they wrote in a commentary piece in Nature.
The authors of the research said this was the first demonstration of cumulative culture in an invertebrate.