Richards Collins: Busy bees still make time for play

Bumble bees rolling balls for enjoyment as researchers have, for the first time, observed insects interact with inanimate objects as a form of play.  Picture: Richard Rickitt/PA 

‘Play’ is a most misused adult word. To a child, it’s a way of life. To an adult, it often means unimportant recreational things we do when we are not working’ — Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Only mammals and birds are known to ‘play’. Behaviour pursued for the sheer joy it has been recorded only among vertebrates. 

Scientists tend to think that so-called ‘lower’ creatures have neither the need, nor the ability, to indulge in it.

But now, a paper has appeared which challenges that assumption. Scientists at Queen Mary College, London, have shown that bumble bees are not always as ‘busy as bees’, they also like to play. 

Dogs and children chase balls. Now, it seems, bumble bees like to do so also.

In previous research at the college, bees were trained to push little coloured balls around in an artificial arena. They would even ‘kick’ the balls between miniature goalposts. They did so in anticipation of a food reward for the performance.

In recent experiments, however, bees readily played with the balls spontaneously, as a child or a dog would, without any expectation of a reward. Some individuals were observed rolling balls on more than 100 occasions.

Do bumble bees play? Experimental arena set up for the study.

The experimental set-up was designed to exclude the possibility that ball-rolling would enhance opportunities for mating. Nor would it stimulate clutter-clearing behaviour or offer the bees places where they might be tempted to explore for food.

When given the choice between entering a pitch which had no coloured balls and one which had balls, the bees chose the latter.

If required to walk to a food location, they broke their journey along the way to visit an area which had balls.

If pitches of differing colours were presented, the bees opted for the one which had the colour of a pitch on which they had played previously.

Young bees rolled balls more frequently than did older ones, just as children and pups play more enthusiastically than adult humans and dogs. 

Also, male bees played for longer periods than females. These behaviours, the researchers note, seem remarkably similar to those found in vertebrate play.

Ball rolling by bumble bees fulfils animal play criteria;  younger bees rolled more balls, with age patterns resembling mammalian juvenile play.

Clearly, bumble bees find playing with balls rewarding, although what benefits it offers them remain a mystery. 

Their behaviour during the experiments meets the scientists’, and indeed Rousseau’s, ‘animal play criteria’. 

"Ball rolling did not contribute to immediate survival strategies" the paper notes. It "was intrinsically rewarding, differed from functional behaviour in form and was initiated under stress-free conditions".

These findings suggest that insects are not just robots triggered by stimuli from their environment to respond automatically, just as an aircraft’s automatic-pilot does.

The extraordinary capabilities of social bees have been extensively researched and are well known but their abilities at the individual level, however, have not been so well studied, the authors note.

The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka. Picture: @LChittka

The German zoologist Lars Chittka, author of The Mind of a Bee recently published, claims that these social insects have distinct personalities. 

They can, he argues, recognise people’s faces, use tools and solve complex problems. 

He even suggests that bees may have a form of mind and consciousness. The Queen Mary research does not establish this, but it’s thought-provoking.

• Samadi Galpayage et al. Do bumble bees play? Animal Behaviour. 2022