”Honeybees have a strong tendency to turn right when they enter an open cavity. This bias may help them make a collective decision about where to build new nests.
Directional biases exist in many animals, but they may be particularly important in social species for promoting cohesion within the group.
To see if honeybees have such a bias, Thomas O’Shea-Wheller of Louisiana State University allowed 30 bees to explore two boxes. One was open inside and the other contained a branching maze of narrow tunnels.
Out of 180 trials in the open cavity, the bees immediately turned right on 86 occasions but turned left just 35 times. On the remaining 59 occasions they flew straight ahead. What’s more, when they turned right in the experiment, they did so more quickly than when they turned left, suggesting it’s a more automatic response.”
