Bees exhibit behavioural flexibility to learned visual cues to prevent negative consequences during navigation in clutter

Bumblebees navigate complex environments where collisions with obstacles can impair flight performance. While bees possess innate collision avoidance reflexes, they may benefit from learning to identify and avoid high-risk collision areas using environmental cues. However, the temporal dynamics of how bees form associations between visual cues and collision experiences remain unclear. We investigated whether bumblebees associate visual cues perceived before or after collision events with a collision avoiding movement direction. Individual foragers were trained to navigate through a flight tunnel containing a transparent barrier and an LED panel that switched colours immediately after the bee's first collision. Following training, we tested bees' responses to each colour cue without the barrier. Bees demonstrated significant preferences for avoiding the previously blocked side when presented with either the colour shown before the first collision (81% avoidance-consistent choice) or the colour shown after the first collision (71% avoidance-consistent choice), while showing no preference when no colour cue was presented. These results are consistent with bees forming associations with visual cues encountered in different time windows relative to negative experiences. However, an equally plausible interpretation is that the bees learned primarily the association with the visual cue they saw before the first collision and then translated this learned response to the related, but distinguishable, cue they saw after the first collision. Both interpretations demonstrate considerable flexibility with which bees form and deploy memories to aid navigation in cluttered environments.