BUMBLEBEES CAN LEARN TO ASSOCIATE NEW SMELLS WITH THEIR QUEEN

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa., Aug. 11 -- Pennsylvania State University issued the following news release:

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Bumblebees are able to learn to associate new odors with their colony's queen, instead of being preprogrammed to recognize the queen's pheromones from birth, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State.

For the study, recently published in the journal Communications Biology, the researchers treated buff-tailed bumblebee queens daily with one of two different floral scents as they built their colonies.

Later, the researchers gave these worker bees - who grew up exposed to one of these scents as they tended to the queen - a choice between the floral scent applied to their queen and a new, different scent th...