reasoning.

[Hivemaker.]

Does a honey bee have any sense of reasoning.

 

[Finman]

Does a honey bee have any sense of reasoning.

Like make to me a trap? - And think that I am a guy who steal its honey?

Sometimes that idea visit in my head...

 

[Polyanwood]

Does a honey bee have a sense of self?

 

[Bcrazy]

Sense of reasoning? Good question.

Firstly what is the definition of reasoning?
Reasoning is the cognitive process of looking for reasons for beliefs, conclusions, actions or feeling.

Does the honey bee have the ability to reason why they have to fly for food? NO.

The genetic composition of the bee is known to exert a major effect on behaviour. As with the diverse genetic makeup the bees from different male sperm will have slightly different behaviour patterns.
As far as bees capability to reason and think why they are carrying out certain tasks I believe this is inbreed and part of the genetic characteristics of bees and they do not have the ability to think or reason things through.

The combination of internal factors, which we do not see, tend to cause specific activities of bees. Dance language, food exchange etc. Consequently these activities caused by invisible factors are frequently mistaken as evidence of cognition. Therefore the illusion created is the bees have a significant degree of human intelligence which i believe is not so.

So in my opinion insects do not have a reasoning process.


Polyanwood - I don't quite understand the question.



Regards;

 

[Finman]

Therefore the illusion created is the bees have a significant degree of human intelligence which i believe is not so.

I know that many even intelligent beekeeper think that bees have empathy attitude towards their nurser. For example if bad boys throw stones on hive, bees remember naughty boys and give a little bit speed them next time. "Boys show the direction and bees the speed".

Many think too that swarming and aggressivenes are some kind of penalty against the nurser and many beekeeper insist that his hives do not swarm or sting.

 

[raysa]

Does the honey bee have the ability to reason why they have to fly for food? NO.

I think this is probably right, but it is not certain. Evidence of reasoning (or not reasoning) is extremely hard to establish. If a 'reasoning' alien species - as different from us as we are from bees - were to look at the human race, they would find it very difficult to determine whether we reasoned or not. What do we actually do that couldn't be explained by instinct or inbred ritual rather than reasoning?

It seems to me unwise to make firm assumptions about other creature's thinking powers, when their thinking (if it exists at all) is bound to be very different from ours.

Ray

I think, therefore I am, I think.

 

[Bcrazy]

I understand what you are saying but were not talking alien species were talking Honey bee an insect.

Why do beekeepers try to associate the bee with having attributes to other species? I don't understand it.

Regards;

 

[Polyanwood]

I think, therefore I am, I think.

BCrazy the above was what I was getting at. Some theories of the mind and intelligence state that if an organism does not have a sense of self i.e. know that it is an individual, separate from other individuals with control over itself; it cannot think. i.e. it cannot think unles it has a sense of self.

By this definition of reasoning I think bees are miles off.

 

[raysa]

My point is certainly not to try to associate the bee with any particular attributes - quite the reverse - but equally not to assume an absence of an attribute that we cannot discern.

When considering a creature as alien to us as a bee (and I mean alien in the general sense, nothing to do with being extra-terrestrial!), we just don't know do we?

Ray

 

[Hivemaker.]

Interesting views. I have found some interesting pages on the net about tests done about this subject,and why bee's go off flight paths and knowing these lead to good forage, and why some bee's find a good forage area but do not comunicate this info to others in the hive,and this all gets rather confusing,but they all end up by saying inconclusive,apart from one newspaper clip i found,if that can be believed. I think i would be open minded at this time. Take guard bee's at the hive entrance,they will interogate a strange forager trying to enter the hive,if the forager has nectar it is usually allowed in,if not it is often refused entry. Is this an instinct,or is it a thought,that the forager being allowed in is of use to the colony,and the one carrying no nectar is no use,is this a form of reasoning. Most of the time i work on the bee's alone,some sting some don't,if i have another person with me they often get stung and i get none,why,is it the smell,do they percieve the other person as a threat because it is usually only me looking at them,is this thinking or reasoning or not? I can have a nasty hive and do checks on them every week,yet every week they sting, and die. This must be no sense of reasoning,As they would surely know i never do them any harm.You can keep one of these nasty hives open for an extended amount of time,even go have a cup of tea,come back and they are placid,have they reasoned its a waste of time to carry on attacking?. below is the newspaper clip.

Bee's can think.

This discovery will have set the world of animal behaviour abuzz. Vertebrates - and especially primates - were thought to be the only creatures that could hold in their heads the concepts of "the same" and "different". Now the team from France, Germany and Australia say their research shows "that higher cognitive functions are not a privilege of vertebrates."

Bees are the cooperative go-getters of the insect world. The workers wake up, set off, search, find a source of honey, return, tell their colleagues where the best supplies are, then find their way back. Researchers have watched, noted and experimented for years to discover how bees navigate and communicate.

Martin Giurfa of the Free University in Berlin, and colleagues from Narbonne and Canberra, noted from earlier studies that bees can "interpolate visual information, exhibit associative recall, categorise visual information and learn contextual information" - do what in a human would be evidence of thinking. So they set the bees a test.

They trained the honeybees Apis mellifera to recognise particular colours and grating patterns, using a Y-shaped maze. In one trial, the bees saw either blue or yellow as they approached the entrance to the maze. When they got to the Y junction, they saw that one turning was labelled blue, the other yellow. They quickly learned that the sucrose reward was to be found down the turning that had the same colour code as at the entrance.

In further experiments they found that the bees could perform the same mental gymnastics with similar and different grating patterns. And when colours were swapped for odours - lemon and mango - they saw the same outcome. The bees could tell sameness from oddity in the abstract. They could think .
Bees use their reasoning powers to get to the nectar, according to an international team of scientists.
In tests, the bees learned which signs led the way to something sweet and which did not, the researchers report in Nature today.

In further experiments they found that the bees could perform the same mental gymnastics with similar and different grating patterns. And when colours were swapped for odours - lemon and mango - they saw the same outcome. The bees could tell sameness from oddity in the abstract. They could think

Bees use their reasoning powers to get to the nectar, according to an international team of scientists.
In tests, the bees learned which signs led the way to something sweet and which did not, the researchers report in Nature today.

 

[Finman]

Interesting views. ...........the researchers report in Nature today.

Every time when I open this forum, I think what a hell these 20 members are thinking about me.

Next time when I go to my apiry, I think what a hell these 1 000 000 bees are thinking about me.

 

[Hivemaker.]

You need to be open minded Finman, your bee's may have reasons to attack you, without reasoning.

 

[Finman]

You need to be open minded Finman, .

Jep, I will open my mind and tell them what I am thinking about. They get something to wonder about.

 

[Hivemaker.]

This sounds like a good scientific study,what will you tell them. Don't let anyone see you,they may think you lost your sense of reasoning.

 

[Polyanwood]

I wonder if most pople would think learning to recognise a pattern is reasoning? I think not.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Yes but lets face it poly,these people don't know much,there only scientists.

 

[Polyanwood]

Different scientists say different things. It depends on what definitions they use of reason/thinking.

I don't reckon most as them are as clever as Finman.

 

[Finman]

.
If bees have a little bit reasoning, they should understand what happens when they go through pollen trap.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Perhaps they do. they get in hive and THINK bugger where has pollen gone.

 

[Polyanwood]

Good picture but bad argument Finman!

By your thinking humans wouldn't smoke or drink or do other things that are bad for the individual and society.