If bees forget honey pulls/inspections in 10 days, how can bees remember faces?

[FloridaGardener]

This is not a rhetorical question.

Bees can remember faces, and I think generationally they can remember places. Why can they forget inspection/honey robbing in 10 days?

Would love to hear the science on it. 

[The15thMember]

This is not a rhetorical question.

Bees can remember faces, and I think generationally they can remember places. Why can they forget inspection/honey robbing in 10 days?

Would love to hear the science on it. 

What exactly do you mean by forget?  Like the fact that the next time you come in they don't all out attack you because they remember you did something negative?  I think they would if you didn't treat them well when you inspected or if you inspected them too frequently.  Ideally, an inspection isn't a horrible negative occurrence for a colony, just an inconvenience.  I think the amount off bees killed during an inspection has a big impact on their demeanor during the inspection and ongoing, anything else you mess up is something they can just fix and get back to work, and it doesn't bother them enough to hate you for it.  If the honey was there, then the hive was opened, and now the honey is gone, I doubt the bees can interpret that cause and effect sequence as the fact that the beekeeper took the honey.  I got a new bee suit recently, and I swear the first week I wore it the bees were irritated with me because it smelled and looked different from my old one, but they got used to it once I broke it in.  So I think they do remember, they just don't care enough to show you.  I know this isn't really science, but just logically musing.       

[Acebird]

There was an experiment done and I don't know where but bee memory is closer to 3 days.  Bees use smell more than sight for recognition.  Kinda like your dog.

[BeeMaster2]

I?m pretty sure their memory is much longer than 3 days. I put stickies and equipment out at certain locations. When I put new ones at the same location, the bees find it very quickly. When I pick a new location, it sometimes takes several days for the bees to find it. They find old locations several months later very quickly but not new ones.
Jim Altmiller

[Bob Wilson]

But can they do advanced trigonometry?

[FloridaGardener]

Ha, Yes, they can orient to the sun with polarized light!

And they can earn to use tools, just like ravens.
When I put a feral extraction into a hive with a SHB Dixie/Swiffer towel trap, it doesn't take the bees long to learn how to herd SHB onto the "sticky trap."

Some colonies folded over a corner of the towel, making a little "envelope" where the SHB would dead end. (pun intended) 
So now when I lay out the towel I fold a corner over.  So bees can condition us, as well.

BTW if you haven't seen "My Octopus Teacher" on Netflix, I highly recommend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0LTDhqe5A

[Michael Bush]

Huber's New Observations on Bees, Bicentennial Edition, page 445:

"Experiments showing bees find honey by smell.

To ascertain whether it was the odor of honey and not the sight of flowers only which apprises bees of its presence, we must hide this substance where their eyes could not see it; for this purpose, we first placed honey near the apiary, in a window, where the shutters almost closed still allowed their passage if they chose; in less than a quarter of an hour, four bees, a butterfly and some house-flies insinuated themselves between the shutter and the window, and we found them feeding on it.  Although this observation was sufficiently conclusive, I wished it better confirmed:  we took boxes of different sizes, colors and forms, we adjusted to them small card valves corresponding with apertures in their covers; honey being put into them, they were placed two hundred paces from my apiary.
In half an hour bees were seen arriving, they carefully inspected the boxes, and soon discovering openings through which they could enter we saw them press against the valves and reach the honey.
One may thence judge of the extreme delicacy of smelling of these insects; not only was the honey quite concealed from view, but its emanations could not be much diffused, since it was covered and disguised in the experiment...

Bees have long memories.

Not only have the bees a very acute sense of smell, but to this advantage is added the recollection of sensations; here is an example.  Honey had been placed in a window in autumn, bees came to it in multitudes; the honey was removed and the shutters closed during the winter; but when opened again, on return of spring, the bees came back, though no honey was there; doubtless they remembered that some had been there before; thus an interval of several months did not obliterate the impression received.
Let us now seek the site or the organ of this sense, whose existence has been so well proved."

So the bees that were there that fall remembered where there was honey the next spring when it warmed up...

[rast]

I am attempting to correlate the life span of the average forager with these memory timespans. I suppose it only takes one long-lived bee, and yes I am aware your winter bees live longer.

[BeeMaster2]

With my experiences with bees and their memories, I suspect that there is some way they transfer information. Not sure how but it seem like it must be happening.
Jim Altmiller

[rast]

 Yes, Jim I thought of that, perhaps doing a dance before one dies in the hive.

[Acebird]

I suspect that there is some way they transfer information. Not sure how but it seem like it must be happening.

By dance.

[Michael Bush]

Obviously some of the bees in the fall live until spring or the colony would be gone...

[yes2matt]

This is not a rhetorical question.

Bees can remember faces, and I think generationally they can remember places. Why can they forget inspection/honey robbing in 10 days?

Would love to hear the science on it.

Paper wasps remember faces, and recognize each other. I had not heard that about honey bees? Do you have a research link?

I kinda guess that the bees generally remember me, though, for a few days. Esp after I made them mad one day they'll be picky the next. Next week we start fresh.

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[FloridaGardener]

https://theconversation.com/are-they-watching-you-the-tiny-brains-of-bees-a
nd-wasps-can-recognise-faces-100884

[yes2matt]

https://theconversation.com/are-they-watching-you-the-tiny-brains-of-bees-a
nd-wasps-can-recognise-faces-100884

Wow.

So I followed that link and some of the source study links.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C34&q=ag+dyer+honey+bee+faces&btnG=

If you click this search the main article is at the top. But click the person's name (Adrian Dyer) and some of his other work. Honey bees can count! And associate a symbol with an amount!

But your original question about how one bee's recognition of my face gets distributed and remembered by the whole colony? ... maybe I'll send Dr Dyer an email.

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[yes2matt]

Yes, Jim I thought of that, perhaps doing a dance before one dies in the hive.

Betcha'a'nickel this is it. I bet it's like our own brains, a constant-ish rehearsal/ storytelling inside the colony. Even if the original foragers have died, the colony has kept their dance alive all winter.

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[BeeMaster2]

Matt,
That sounds about right.
Jim Altmiller

[FloridaGardener]

I wonder if some certain age of bees (say, theoretically bees aged 20 days) teach younger bees skills, such as building queen cups. 
Because normally the bees just spin circles in the wax, their body heat melts the wax, which is pulled by surface tension into stable hexagonal shapes.  Bees don't "try" to make hexagons; the hexagons are made because it's a principle of physics that circles will "melt" into hexagons. 120 degrees on each side is the balance between surface tension and maximum density. 
But queen cells are different, so play cups are made for practice.

So maybe there's a bee class at some point to say... "Here's how we do this with the wax if we don't smell Q pheromone..." or "Here's where Jim puts the stickies..."