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Study

Numerical ordering of zero in honey bees

Howard, Scarlett R.; Avarguès-Weber, Aurore; Garcia, Jair E.; Greentree, Andrew D.; Dyer, Adrian G.

Science, 2018

Peer-reviewedcontrolled laboratory experimentlaboratory

What they did

Bees were trained to fly to whichever of two displays showed fewer shapes. They were then tested with an empty display against displays containing one, two or more shapes — a comparison they had never been trained on.

Studied in
Apis mellifera
Sample size
individually trained free-flying honey bees

What they found

Bees chose the empty display above chance, and did so more reliably the larger the number it was compared against.

What it means

The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.

How the authors put it

Honey bees place an empty set at the low end of a numerical continuum, a rudimentary understanding of zero as a quantity.

How NatureHQ reads it

The distance effect is what makes this convincing: the bees found "nothing versus five" easier than "nothing versus one", which is what you would expect if they were placing empty on a number line, and not what you would expect from a simple rule such as "prefer the emptier-looking card". Treating an absence as a quantity is a step that took human mathematics a long time. This remains a small number of trained insects performing a trained task.

Limitations

  • Trained, food-motivated bees in a controlled apparatus.
  • Low-level visual cues such as total ink area are difficult to eliminate entirely.
  • Does not imply any symbolic or abstract concept of zero.

The experiment, explained

  • Showing a bee nothing at all

    Can an insect treat "nothing" as a quantity — the smallest one — rather than as an absence?

What this study is used for on NatureHQ

One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.

Finding the paper

Published by: American Association for the Advancement of SciencePublished in Science or Science Advances (AAAS).

doi.org/10.1126/science.aar4975

This reference was resolved automatically against Crossref and OpenAlex on 2026-08-11.

NatureHQ summarises research in its own words and does not reproduce published text. Reviewed 2026-08-09.