Bees are disappearing due to colony collapse disorder (CCD), but the ones that are still flying are great navigators, able to wend their way home through complex landscapes after visits to flowers far removed from their nests. But bees are more like humans than you might expect: Some (but not all) have memory problems that increase with age. To test how old bees adapt to a changed home location, researchers trained bees to a new nest box while their former nest was closed off. Groups composed of mature and old bees were given several days in which to learn the new home location and forget about the old one. Researcher Daniel Münch says, "Although many old bees fail in learning tasks, we also discovered that a few still perform with excellence." The scientists believe that their findings with bees offer a new way to understand the variability found in brain function between individuals; where some individuals’ memories remain intact, while others’ learning behavior becomes inflexible with age. If YOUR memory isn’t what it used to be, what you need is one of our exquisite crop circle calendars (and we’re the only place you can get one in the US!) And if you subscribe to this website for TWO years, we’ll send you one FREE (along with a 2010 crop circle calendar that you can use RIGHT NOW).
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