Many animals understand numbers at a basic level for use in essential tasks such as foraging, shoaling, and resource management. However, complex arithmetic operations, such as addition and subtraction, using symbols and/or labelling have only been demonstrated in a limited number of nonhuman vertebrates.
Honeybees have a miniature brain with less than 1 million neurons – compared to humans with over 80 billion. New research (see below) shows that honeybees can learn to use blue and yellow as symbolic representations for addition or subtraction. In a free-flying environment, individual bees use this information to solve unfamiliar problems involving adding or subtracting one element from a group of elements.
This ability requires bees to acquire long-term rules and use short-term working memory. Given that honeybees and humans are separated by over 400 million years of evolution, the findings suggest that advanced numerical cognition may be more accessible to nonhuman animals than previously suspected.
And that humans and honeybees might well share a common ancestor from 600 million years ago that was just as smart!
From: “Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction”
by:
Bee Lore 
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