A Sentience Article used with permission from All-Creatures.org

Marc Bekoff reports on new research that shines light on the inner world of bees, their sentience, and their capacity for empathy.

Happy Sugar-Filled Bumble Bees Feel and Share Their Joy
From Marc Bekoff, Ph.D., PsychologyToday.com
October 2025

Images from Canva

Bees are well-known to be sentient individuals with very active minds who display rich cognitive and emotional lives. What has never before been shown is that bumble bees, who play with balls and seem to enjoy it, not only feel joy and happiness but also can spread this feeling to other bees. In an article (currently unavailable online) in the journal Science titled "Positive affective contagion in bumble bees," Dr. José E. Romero-González and his colleagues report:

"Affective contagion, a core component of empathy, has been widely characterized in social vertebrates but its existence in any invertebrate is unknown. Using a cognitive bias paradigm we demonstrate positive affective contagion in bumble bees. After being trained on colored flowers with different reinforcements, bees that interacted with a conspecific in a positive affective state were quicker and more likely than controls to land on ambiguous colored flowers, indicating the transfer of a positive judgment bias between bees. Additional observations and experiments showed that affect could be transmitted between bees without physical contact, i.e., through visual modality alone. Our findings suggest that affective contagion may be an evolutionarily widespread mechanism present in both social vertebrates and social insects."

I believe that this research is important to share widely because it expands what I call the "biodiversity of sentience" to invertebrates who possess tiny brains and often are written off as being insentient. Yet after a bee was given a high dose of sugar water, another bee, seeing this sugar-loaded individual, then showed a change in behavior. In an article reporting on this finding, "Scientists Say Bees Can Feel Happiness—and It’s Contagious," Luis Prada writes that after the sugar-hyped bee's behavior changed, "[i]t got exploratory, bolder in its explorations, willing to land on different types of flowers than it was used to, and quicker to do it. When other bees hung around this newly pepped-up bee, they too started acting all happy and adventurous, even though they hadn’t been given any sugar water. The vibe had spread." By separating the bees, the researchers learned that simply seeing a sugar-filled bee could change the behavior of other bees and that touch and odor weren't necessary.

Sharing emotions is called "emotional contagion," and this landmark study shows that tiny-brained animals can display it and that it might be a basic feature of social living. Buzzing bees might be spreading joy as well as pollen.

Stay tuned for more research that shows that the biodiversity of sentience is far more widespread than previously imagined. It's not only big-brained animals who can share their feelings.

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References

Bekoff, Marc. The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy―and Why They Matter. New World Library, 2024.

Prada, Luis. Scientists Say Bees Can Feel Happiness—and It’s Contagious. Vice, October 27, 2025.

Romero-González, José E. et al. Positive affective contagion in bumble bees. Science 390, 377-380, October 23, 2025. DOI:10.1126/science.adr0216

What Do Bees Think and Feel When They Buzz, Fly, and Dance?; The Swarm Intelligence of Piping Hot and Boisterous Honey Bees; The Fascinating Minds and Personalities of Bees; Bumble Bees Play With Balls and May Even Enjoy It; The Edge of Sentience: Why Drawing Lines Is So Difficult.

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Article originally published on PsychologyToday.com:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/202510/happy-sugar-filled-bumble-bees-feel-and-share-their-joy

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: November 6, 2025
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