Bumble bees have demonstrated an impressive ability that scientists once believed was limited to humans and other animals with much larger brains. In a new study, the insects successfully completed a completely unfamiliar object manipulation task despite never being taught how to solve it.
The findings challenge a long-standing belief that spontaneous problem solving is unique to humans and other large-brained vertebrates.
More than a century ago, psychologist Wolfgang Köhler showed that chimpanzees could suddenly solve unfamiliar problems by combining objects in new ways, such as stacking boxes to reach a banana hanging overhead. Those experiments became classic examples of insight and spontaneous problem solving in animals.
Now, researchers from the University of Oulu, the University of Helsinki, and the University of Turku in Finland have found comparable abilities in bumble bees.
Bumble Bees Solved a Novel Challenge
The study, published in Science, tested bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) with a problem they had never encountered before.
First, the bees learned that a blue artificial flower contained a reward. During the experiment, researchers moved that flower to the ceiling of a transparent arena, placing it beyond the bees’ reach.
To reach the reward, the bees had to come up with a completely new solution. Successful individuals rolled a small ball beneath the flower and then climbed onto it, a sequence of actions they had never been trained to perform.
“This is essentially an insect version of the classic ‘box-and-banana’ problem,” says senior author Olli Loukola, Docent at the University of Oulu. “The animal must realize that an object can be repositioned and then used as a tool to reach an otherwise inaccessible goal. What stands out about the result is that this kind of spontaneous problem-solving is now demonstrated in an insect.”
“What makes this behavior especially remarkable is that the bees had never been trained to roll the ball. This was a completely new challenge. Their behavior appeared goal-directed with successful individuals showing more directed movement patterns,” says lead author Akshaye Bhambore from the University of Oulu.
Control Experiments Ruled Out Simpler Explanations
The bees were never taught to move the ball beneath the flower. Instead, they learned only two separate things beforehand: that the blue flower provided a reward and that the ball was a movable, harmless object.
When faced with the new challenge, many of the bees combined those earlier experiences in a way that went beyond anything they had previously learned.
“Another important aspect is that our bees were fully naïve,” Loukola adds. “In many previous studies of insight-like problem-solving, the animals have had extensive experience with objects, test environments, or other problem-solving tasks. Here, the bees had never been trained to use the ball to reach the flower, and they had no previous experience with this kind of solution. We also designed the experiments to rule out simpler explanations such as accidental success, play behavior, trial-and-error learning, or direct visual guidance.”
The researchers also carried out several control experiments to eliminate alternative explanations, including accidental success and simple visual guidance.
In some of the more demanding tests, the flower was hidden from view while the bees moved the ball. That prevented them from simply steering toward a visible target. Even so, many bees still rolled the ball to the correct location.
“By analyzing the bees’ behavior across unusually stringent control experiments, we could show that they were not simply reacting to visual stimuli or moving the ball randomly,” says lead author Bhambore.
Tiny Brains Show Remarkable Flexibility
Watching the bees solve the challenge surprised even the scientists conducting the experiments.
“One moment the animal is exploring seemingly without direction, and the next it performs a highly efficient sequence of actions leading directly to the solution,” says co-author Ece Nur Akmeşe from the University of Helsinki. “Watching the bees solving the task was genuinely fascinating.”
The new findings add to growing evidence that bees possess sophisticated cognitive abilities despite their tiny brains. Previous studies have shown that bees can socially learn tool use, solve puzzle-like tasks, cooperate with one another, and adapt their behavior to changing situations.
The researchers stress, however, that these results should not be interpreted as evidence that insects think the way humans do or possess human-like consciousness.
“We are not claiming that bees think like humans,” says Loukola, who currently works as a Senior Researcher at the University of Turku. “But our findings show that miniature brains can generate flexible solutions to novel problems in ways we are only beginning to understand.”
Overall, the results suggest that spontaneous, goal directed problem solving can emerge even in animals with brains far smaller than those of the vertebrates that have traditionally been studied in intelligence research.
“For over a century, spontaneous object-based problem-solving has mostly been studied in vertebrates,” says Loukola. “Our study suggests insects may belong in that conversation too.”
The study, titled “Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees,” by Akshaye A. Bhambore, Ece N. Akmeşe, Emma Häkkinen, Milla K. Jussila, Juha-Heikki Kantola, and Olli J. Loukola, was published on June 4, 2026, in the journal Science.
