Bees experience ‘emotion-like’ states, get stressed

Stressed bees “lack a buzz in life” and will make poor choices as a result, according to new research.

A team of scientists at Newcastle University in the UK found that bees responded to adverse events in a way that is similar to human emotions.

The findings of the study showed that bees reduce their expectations of reward when they are agitated, which could impact how they approach and pollinate flowers.

"Our study shows that bees are more pessimistic after stress, as their behavior suggests that they do not expect to get rewards,” said Dr Vivek Nityananda, one of the co-authors.

While “we might never know” if bees feel something similar to complex human emotions, the study showed that their behavior did exhibit traits of pessimistic people when stressed, Nityananda said.

Researchers trained a group of bees to decide whether a color signaled something good or bad. One color was associated with a location that offered better rewards, while another indicated a location with a worse reward.

Once bees learned these associations, two groups experienced a simulated predatory attack, and a third group was not subjected to any external stress.

The experiment showed that bees who went through a simulated attack were more likely to visit low reward locations than bees that did not.

"Our research suggests that like other animals including humans, bees may experience emotion-like states when stressed, as demonstrated by a clear shift towards pessimism,” Dr Olga Procenko, who led the study, said.

“When faced with ambiguity, stressed bees, much like someone seeing the glass as 'half empty,' are more likely to expect negative outcomes,” she said, adding that the study “opens up new possibilities” for understanding how stress affects insect cognition and behavior.

In turn, this could provide insights into insect responses to environmental challenges and inform conservation efforts. Further research was needed to see if bees in the wild show similar responses, scientists said.

The paper detailing the findings of the study was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a research journal.