Study
Honey bees navigate according to a map-like spatial memory
Menzel, Randolf; Greggers, Uwe; Smith, Alan D.; Berger, Sandra; Brandt, Robert
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2005
Foraging bees were captured, displaced to unfamiliar release sites, and tracked by harmonic radar to see whether they could reach the hive or a known feeder from a place they had never flown from.
- Studied in
- Apis mellifera
- Sample size
- radar-tracked individual foragers
Displaced bees often flew an initial vector, then changed course and headed directly to the hive or feeder, suggesting they could relate their position to remembered locations.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Bees hold a map-like spatial memory allowing novel shortcuts between familiar places.
How NatureHQ reads it
A genuinely important and genuinely contested result. Whether insects hold anything resembling a map, or instead match remembered panoramic views, has been argued about ever since — and the argument is substantive rather than a matter of wording. NatureHQ records the disagreement rather than picking the more impressive side.
- Radar tracking limits terrain and sample size.
- Alternative explanations based on remembered panoramas can account for much of the data.
- Release sites within the general foraging range may share visual cues with familiar areas.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
One study can inform several subjects. Here is everywhere this one is cited.
Published by: Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesPublished in PNAS.
doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0408550102
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.