Dominance of Celestial Cues over Landmarks Disproves Map-Like Orientation in Honey Bees

Any goal within the flight range of the bee is characterized by direction and distance from the hive. These two parameters are also the basic in­ formations transmitted in bee dances. The direc­ tion has to be calculated by using an individually acquired sun compass, whereas the distance is esti­ mated by the amount of energy invested during the flight [1], Local and distant landmarks are used for supplementary control of these orientation mecha­ nisms. Bees reconstruct a compass direction from landmarks when the sun is not visible [2], The bee’s flight is of course susceptible to wind influences; the bee must, therefore, be able to use landmarks for course corrections and to reset the memorized goal distance. Together with the automatism of path integration [3, 4] no other mechanism ap­ pears necessary to explain long distance orienta­ tion in the honey bee or other insects [5], (For short distance orientation bees rely on sequences of memories of closer landmarks as shown by Opfinger [6], Collett and Kelber [7].) Recently, it has been proposed by Gould [8] that landmarks might not only be used for course control mecha­ nisms, but that bees are able to perform navigation­ al calculations within a mental representation of the landmarks. They should thus be capable of ori­ enting according to an internal mental map. The map might result from a composition of the expe­ rienced landmarks en-route into a map-like memo­ ry, or a composition of the vectors and distances into a vector map centered around the hive. Evi­ dence for the existence of such a “mental” map is taken from displacement experiments which were