On average, successful training for an individual bee took 309 ± 18 min. Three of these successfully trained bees were later used as demonstrators in the social learning experiment. The bees usually learned this trick after watching the trained bee five times, and sometimes even after one observation. Successive steps: Step 0, pretraining on blue artificial flowers (note that all bees were trained on this step); Step 1, 50% of the flower covered by the transparent table; Step 2, 75% of the flower covered; Steps 3 and 4, 100% of the flower covered. We presented individual bees with three blue artificial flowers with a string attached to each flower and placed under a small transparent Plexiglas table (Materials and Methods). When given a second 5-min opportunity, two of 25 untrained bees succeeded in obtaining the reward ( S6 Video ). After 5 d of foraging, with a maximum number of 18 foraging bouts per individual, no single bee learned to pull the string. Thorax width affected neither demonstrators’ (Student’s t test, t 26 = 0.659, p = 0.516) nor observers’ success rate (Mann–Whitney U test, U 23 = 79, p = 0.846). Sixty percent of the individuals (15 of 25) that had the opportunity to observe a skilled demonstrator managed to pull the string and obtained the reward on the first trial after having observed the demonstration (Test 2, Fig 2C , S6 Video ). Such coiled-string tests have in the past been used to test whether animals can solve a string pulling puzzle by means-end comprehension, without the perceptual feedback of the reward coming closer [ 44 , 45 ]. The Spread of String Pulling in a Transmission Chain Experiment 
 
 Can the combination of multiple simple social learning mechanisms mediate the establishment of a culture-like phenomenon (e.g. In another series of experiments, the researchers trained the bees by first placing the flower next to the bee and then moving it ever farther under the table. We conducted additional foraging bouts in two of the tested colonies and found that the technique continued to spread among the foragers for as long as we allowed the spread to progress (Colony 6: 34/47, Colony 8: 18/28, Fig 5, S13 and S15 Videos). In another experiment, scientists put bees that knew how to pull the string back into their colony and a majority of the colony's workers picked up string pulling by watching one trained bee do it when it left the colony in search of food. Size of nodes indicates number of interactions of that individual bee with any other bee—each interaction increases the size of a node by 15% of the original size (3% of the plot width). Rutz is impressed, too, because the work involved almost 300 bees and clearly documented how string pulling spread from bee to bee in multiple colonies. To determine whether experience of the second bee influenced the observer bee’s choice of string to pull, we analyzed the pulling behavior of 25 randomly selected observer bees over the complete sequence of their foraging career during the diffusion experiment (282 paired foraging bouts). The social transmission estimate reflects the degree to which social interactions between bees influence the diffusion of string pulling.
– Ever wondered how tiny a bumble bee's brain is? Imagine a sesame seed clinging to a burger bun, reports the Washington Post—in other words, it's about 0.0002% the volume of a human brain, as calculated by Science. But that doesn't mean you can't teach a bee a new trick, as behavioral ecologist Clint Perry tells the paper: "Bees have some amazing cognitive abilities," including counting up to at least four. And now he and colleagues from Queen Mary University of London are reporting in the journal Plos Biology that bees can not only learn an entirely new skill to get food but also pass on their knowledge, which is one of the basic aspects of culture. In their study, researchers placed blue discs with sugar water beneath a clear plastic table, just out of reach, but affixed a string to each one that, if tugged, would move it within reach. Out of 110 bumble bees individually introduced to the task, some tugged at the strings before eventually quitting, and only two sorted out how to pull on the string to get the sugar water. However, when bees got to watch the ones retrieving the sugar water, more than 60% of them were able to pull the string when it was their turn. One of the researchers tells Science that, as exciting as the findings are, the explanation isn't necessarily that bees are smart, but that "culturelike phenomena might actually be based on relatively simple mechanisms." (One type of bumblebee has nearly gone extinct in 20 years.)