At Scientific American, Adam Kovac reports on a recent finding that “Bumblebees appear to be capable of coming up with creative solutions to new problems to get a sugary reward—and their strategies include cheating”:

In a series of experiments, bumblebees were divided into groups and put through a series of tests, all involving the same basic setup: a small chamber with several pits in the floor. If the bees rolled a Styrofoam ball into the correct pit, they could climb onto it to drink from a sugar-filled fake flower on the ceiling of the chamber…

The bees weren’t taught how to use the ball to get to the flower. All they knew going into the experiment was that the flower had a sugary treat inside and that the ball was movable. In all, 16 of the 22 bees the researchers tested successfully rolled the ball into the right pit and got to enjoy a meal. Adam Kovac, “Bumblebees use tools to solve complex problems—despite not being trained to do so,” Scientific American, June 4, 2026

About the cheating bumblebees? “A very few individuals figured out that they don’t need to use the ball at all and that they could just hang off the ceiling and try to drink from the flower.”

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the findings is the fact that the bumblebee has only about one million neurons (humans have 86 billion). The number of neurons needed for complex behavior may have been overestimated.

The paper: Akshaye A. Bhambore et al., Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees. Science392,1046-1049(2026).DOI:10.1126/science.ady161 (Paywall).