---
title: "Honeybee · Animals and other organisms · Entities · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/entities/honeybee
description: "About a million neurons, and bees can learn abstract concepts such as same and different."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

[Entities](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/entities) › Animals and other organisms › Invertebrates with brains

# Honeybee

Apis mellifera

About a million neurons, and bees can learn abstract concepts such as same and different.

Neurons

about 1 million estimate  · whole brain 

Menzel R (2001). Searching for the memory trace in a mini-brain, the honeybee. Learn Mem 8:53-62, citing Witthöft (1967).

## Evidence

* Bees learn the concepts of 'sameness' and 'difference'.  
Giurfa M, Zhang S, Jenett A, Menzel R, Srinivasan MV (2001) The concepts of 'sameness' and 'difference' in an insect. Nature 410(6831):930-933\. doi:10.1038/35073582.
* Agitated (shaken) bees show a pessimistic-like cognitive bias, an affect-like state.  
Bateson M, Desire S, Gartside SE, Wright GA (2011) Agitated honeybees exhibit pessimistic cognitive biases. Curr Biol 21(12):1070-1073\. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.05.017.

The [New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness](https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/nydeclaration/declaration) (2024) finds at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates and in many invertebrates, including cephalopods, decapod crustaceans and insects.

In the trees

[Police the egg-layers · Ethics](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees/ethics?n=e-police)

Assess it against the published criteria