Study
Searching for the memory trace in a mini-brain, the honeybee
Menzel, Randolf
Learning & Memory, 2001
A synthesis of olfactory conditioning work in honey bees, tracing how a memory formed by a single learning trial changes over the hours and days that follow, and which interventions disrupt each stage.
- Studied in
- Apis mellifera
- Sample size
- review of conditioning and pharmacological studies
Bee memory passes through distinguishable phases — short-term, mid-term and two long-term forms — separable by their sensitivity to interference and by whether they require new protein synthesis. A single rewarded trial produces a memory lasting days.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
The honey bee brain supports multiple, mechanistically distinct memory phases comparable in organisation to those described in vertebrates.
How NatureHQ reads it
The useful correction here is against treating memory as one thing. A brain of about a million neurons runs several memory systems with different chemistry and different lifetimes, and the same broad organisation appears in animals a million times larger. Memory is not a single capacity that species have more or less of.
- A review, inheriting the limitations of the conditioning studies it draws on.
- Largely olfactory conditioning in restrained bees, which is a narrow slice of what a forager does.
- Phase boundaries are defined by experimental interventions and are not sharp.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Academic book publishersPublished as an academic monograph.
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.