Bees may be able to tell if water contains sugar just by looking at it

Bumblebees can determine sugary liquids earlier than they even take a sip. This potential to identify a candy reward at a distance might imply that a few of the approaches we have now used to evaluate bee intelligence should be re-evaluated.

“A lot of what we learn about insect cognition comes from work on bees,” says Tomer Czaczkes on the College of Regensburg in Germany. In lots of such research, bees select between synthetic “flowers” after being skilled to …