Brainy bees learn from watching each other

A team of researchers has taught some bumble bees to play golf!

Lots of other tests have tried to find out just how clever the little insects are but almost all of them involved tasks that have been similar to bees normal behaviour.

The scientists were surprised to find out that bees could watch and learn behaviour from other bees.

Then the bees used their newly learned skills to get a food reward.

The team showed a set of bees how to push a ball into a small hole using a plastic demonstration bee.

Scientists then gave some other bees two types of training, watching a bee who had been trained with the plastic bee, push a ball into a hole and another where the ball was moved into the hole using a magnet.

The bees that watched the trained bee pushing the ball into the hole were better at learning what to do than the bees who watched the ball move on its own.

Not only that, the little black and yellow insects did not just copy exactly what they saw, but figured out their own way to get the ball to the right place.