{"id":99326,"date":"2024-07-23T13:40:33","date_gmt":"2024-07-23T17:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology-new\/news\/can-bees-recognize-faces\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T22:50:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T02:50:19","slug":"can-bees-recognize-faces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cals.ncsu.edu\/applied-ecology\/news\/can-bees-recognize-faces\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Bees Recognize Faces?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n

The short answer? Yes. But there\u2019s a bit more to the story.

Recently David Tarpy, professor of applied ecology at NC State and all-around beekeeping expert, sat down with the Audio Abstract<\/a> to talk bees. One of the questions that came up when talking about how bees see the world was whether they recognize faces. Read the answer below, and if you want to hear more about honeybees, you can check out the whole podcast<\/a>.

Note: both the questions and Tarpy\u2019s answers have been lightly edited for readability.<\/em>

Audio Abstract (AA):<\/strong> Can bees recognize faces?

Tarpy:<\/strong> Yes, bees can recognize and differentiate between human faces, so they can recognize their beekeepers over somebody else. There was this really interesting and splashy study<\/a> that was done by researchers at Cambridge in 2004. They set up a reward system where the bees learned to associate particular faces with a honey reward \u2013 similar to the way Pavlov\u2019s dogs learned to associate food with a bell\u2019s sound and would salivate at the ring of a bell. Bees are really, really good at learning. They will stick out their tongues expecting a little bit of honey reward if they get a particular stimulus \u2013 in this case, if they flew toward a certain face. So the researchers could see how well they learn, and if they can learn different faces. And the answer is they can.
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