Can Bees Remember Their Beekeepers?

Sometimes we wonder if our bees remember us.

After spending so much time around the same hives, it is hard not to.

We used to have our own bee farms, and for many seasons we opened the same hives, worked alongside our beekeepers and watched the colonies change with the seasons.

So when we returned to the apiaries, we sometimes found ourselves wondering:

Do the bees remember us too?

It is a simple question, but the more we looked into it, the more complicated — and fascinating — the answer became.

Bees have surprisingly good memories

We used to think of bees as creatures that simply followed instinct.

We were wrong about that too.

Honey bees can learn and remember surprisingly complex things. They can associate smells with food, remember visual patterns and learn their way around a landscape. They can even distinguish between different human faces in laboratory experiments.

For such a small creature, it is remarkable.

And it made us think differently about the world around us. We tend to measure intelligence by how closely another creature behaves like us, but nature has its own ways of remembering, learning and responding.

A bee doesn't need to remember the world in the way we do for its memory to matter.

But do they remember us?

This is where we have to be a little careful.

A bee can learn to recognise particular smells, patterns and experiences. It may associate certain cues with food, danger or what is happening around the hive.

A beekeeper may become familiar through their scent, movements, clothing or the way they approach the colony.

But that is very different from saying that a bee sees us and thinks, "Oh, you're back."

We simply don't know if bees remember an individual person in that way.

And perhaps that's part of what makes the question so interesting.

We started noticing how much the bees notice

When you spend enough time around a hive, you become more aware of how sensitive the bees are to what is happening around them.

They respond to movement, scent, weather and changes in their surroundings. Even the way we approach a hive can affect what happens next.

Our beekeepers seem to understand this instinctively.

They move calmly around the hives, paying attention to the bees rather than simply getting on with the job. Over time, we learnt to do the same.

It is a small lesson, but one we have carried beyond the apiary.

The more closely you observe nature, the more you realise how much is happening that you don't immediately see.

Perhaps we're the ones doing the remembering

The longer we've been around bees, the more we have thought about this.

We remember the hives.

We remember the seasons, the flowering, the weather and the changes we noticed from one visit to the next. We remember the beekeepers who taught us how to look more closely.

The bees may not remember us in the way we imagine.

But they have certainly changed the way we remember the world around them.

A flowering tree is no longer simply a beautiful tree.

A warm day is not just a warm day.

A quiet hive makes us wonder what has changed.

And when we see bees moving from flower to flower, we find ourselves thinking about the colony waiting for them to return.

Nature doesn't always give us the answers

Perhaps that is what we like most about spending time with bees.

Not everything has a neat answer.

We can study them, observe them and learn from them, but there is still so much we don't know about the lives happening all around us.

That feels strangely comforting.

We don't always have to understand everything to appreciate it.

Sometimes it is enough to watch.

To be curious.

To notice that another living creature has its own way of experiencing the world.