The amazing mini-brain: lessons from a honey bee

The brain of a honey bee only contains about 960 000 neurons and is 1 mm(3) in size. However, it supports impressive behavioural capabilities. Honey bees are equipped with sophisticated sensory systems and have well developed learning and memory capacities whose essential mechanisms do not differ drastically from those of vertebrates. This article focuses on complex learning by honey bees. We present the basic organization of the bee brain and show that there is a fair chance of understanding complex behaviour in bees and identifying the potential neural substrates underlying such behaviour.