Bee intelligence: a scientific revolution

Bees are fascinating animals, not only because of their role as pollinators, but also because of the efficiency of their society. They are renowned for their collective intelligence: symbolic communication, work organization, optimal construction... but it is difficult to imagine that each worker bee in the hive is itself endowed with a sophisticated form of intelligence, despite its tiny brain and lifespan of only a few weeks.

However, bees have been shown to be capable not only of learning to recognize flowers and navigate, but also, more surprisingly, of counting, recognizing human faces, judging their own chances of success when faced with a difficult task, and even experiencing a certain form of emotion, among other recent discoveries.

This evidence of reasoning abilities challenges the dogma that insect behavior is innate and reflexive, as well as the direct link between intelligence and brain size. During this lecture, I will present some of the amazing abilities of these pollinating insects, while describing the research methods that are beginning to lift the veil on bee intelligence, and I will discuss the scientific, philosophical, and ecological impact of these discoveries.