Abstract
Bumblebees move about their environments by flying and by walking. Most experimental studies have addressed navigation during foraging flights, but we presented our experimental bees with the challenge of learning to navigate while walking as they must do in nature within topographically complex spaces containing their nests. We trained bumblebee workers to navigate complex, nine-channel, mazes in the absence of specific visual, chemical or textural cues. They successfully navigated through complex multi-turn mazes (stereotypical “rat mazes”) with several dead-ends by memorizing the entire sequence of appropriate turns, and their choice of correct first turn on entering the maze. Thus, their observed proficiencies indicated that the individual bumblebees had each memorized the maze by learning motor sequences which were not linked to visual, chemical or textural stimuli, and that their memories were triggered by contextual cues associated with the bees’ positions in a sequence. Our findings have implications on natural ambulatory activities inside and outside the colony, and even in practical use as vectors of biological control agents.