Do bees dream?

A new study suggests that bees can store information in long-term memory while they sleep, just like humans do when we dream

For all our obvious differences, humans and honeybees share some common threads within the fabric of life.

We are both social species. While humans speak and write to communicate, honeybees dance to one another; waggling their bodies for specific durations at angles that indicate where the best pockets of nectar or pollen are to be found outside the hustle and bustle of the nest.

But only forager bees - the eldest of several types of honeybee castes - do this.

Just like in human populations, the honeybee colony is divided into different sectors of work.

There are cleaners, nurses, security guards, not to mention collection bees whose sole job is to cache nectar in comb.

As they age, honeybees are promoted through a diverse career, from waste disposal to the more familiar forager.

But it is not all work, work, work. Busy bees have to sleep, too. Similar to our circadian rhythm, honeybees sleep between five and eight hours a day.

And, in the case of forager bees, this occurs in day-night cycles, with more rest at night when darkness prevents their excursions for pollen and nectar.

But, given that a hive's primary purpose is productivity and yield, why should a large portion of the population seemingly waste up to a third of the day resting? What are the benefits of sleep?

Over the last few years, a handful of scientists have started to uncover why honeybees need to rest; their findings adding to the list of threads that we share.

Ever since Aristotle studied the monarchy of the honeybee colony in the 3rd Century BC, the species Apis mellifera has been studied by generations of dedicated scientists, each able to discover something entirely new.

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