Figure 2. Bumblebees are only able to utilise absolute information for short periods of time in order to encode and recall ranking information in novel contexts.

(A) Illustration of the training and testing procedure in experiment 4, where two options were separately trained and tested, with a 1-hr interval in between to ensure clear spatial and temporal separation (and no ranking information). (C) The training and testing procedure in experiment 5, where two options were trained in alternating bouts (spatially separated but temporally close). (E) Top view of setup for experiment 6 where a wall separated flowers such that the bee could not see both groups of flowers at the same time. (B, D, and F) Results of the unrewarding test in experiments 4–6. Groups indicate different colour-reward contingency for bees (B & D: 5 bees per group; F: 10 bees per group; Figure 1—figure supplement 3). The bi-colour squares indicate that the colours for the focal options used were counterbalanced across bees. Dashed horizontal lines indicate chance performance. Vertical lines indicate mean ± SEM. p values were calculated from generalised linear models (Materials and methods); NS: p > 0.05; *: p < 0.01.