Bumblebees are capable of both scaffold (learning to solve complex problems step by step) and social (learning by observing and communicating with other bees) learning, particularly when a tasty reward is involved, according to a University of Guelph study.

The researchers conducted two separate studies to understand the bees' abilities.

In the first study, researchers presented bees with a series of artificial flowers that required challenging strategies like moving objects aside or upwards to gain access to a sugary treat.

The researchers found that when an inexperienced bee was a given complex flower first, it was unable to complete the task and stopped trying immediately. But when the bees were given progressive flowers, from the easiest to the hardest, they were able to solve the most difficult challenges as well.

"Bees with experience are able to solve new problems that they encounter, while bees with no experience just give up," Hamida Mirwan, a PhD student in Guelph's School of Environmental Sciences, said in a press release.

This study revealed scaffold learning in the bees. The concept is normally limited to human psychology, where learners progress through increasingly complex steps to solve a problem.

In the second study, the bees were required to walk on the underside of a disk flower to acquire a sugar syrup reward. The researchers found that the bees lingered on the artificial flowers for days to figure out the means to the reward.

To determine whether inexperienced bees could learn from their experienced counterparts, Mirwan placed a set of new bees in a mesh container beside the artificial flowers where they could observe the experienced bees at task.

The experts found that when the new bees were exposed to the artificial flowers, they just took 70 seconds to reach the reward. However, bees that were not allowed to observe the experienced bees before the task were not able to access the syrup.

"Social learning in animals usually involves one individual observing and imitating another, although other kinds of communication can also be involved," said Mirwan. "They could try for up to 30 minutes, but most gave up before then."

"We can't quite explain how bees that had never even seen an artificial flower were able to become adept so quickly at foraging on them, but clearly some in-hive communication took place," Prof. Peter Kevan from School of Environmental Sciences and co-author of the study said. "It suggests that social learning in bumblebees is even more complex than we first expected."

The first study was published in the journal Animal Cognition and the second study in Psyche.