There’s been a lot of discussion in scientific circles about whether animals are sentient beings. Most recently, The New York Declaration of 2024 states;
….. there is strong scientific support for attributions of conscious experience to other mammals and to birds.
…the empirical evidence indicates at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates, including reptiles, amphibians, and fishes, and many invertebrates including, at minimum, cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans, and insects 1
The apparent ‘intelligence’ of honey bees with their relatively large brains, their capacity for learning, and their highly sophisticated social model, would suggest that they do indeed have a degree of awareness of themselves and their surroundings.
Sometimes, when I’m inspecting my hives, I wonder what it must feel like to be one of the residents inside. Here’s an imaginary interview with a spokesbeeperson by a reporter from the New Apiary Times:
“ I was quietly going about my business making wax and getting ready for guard duties when, suddenly, a giant monster like King Kong wearing a suit of white armour ripped off the roof. Then, using a massive crowbar, it prised off the ceiling that we’ve spent hours carefully draught proofing with propolis, making a crack like thunder that reverberated all through the house. The terrifying monster then filled our home with foul smoke, letting in blindingly bright light, and started to pull out the furniture looking for our mother, crushing dozens of hapless girls to death. Needless to say, we were scared out of our wits, and it took us all a couple of days to recover from the trauma and the effects of smoke for the life of the family to get back to normal again.
A week later the monster came back, and we had to go through the same ordeal all over again. But this time it was even worse. This ugly square box of ours low down near the ground was getting too crowded and half of us were getting ready to move out. The scouts had found us a lovely new character hole high up in a tree with great views over the countryside, and we’d stopped feeding mum so she could slim down enough to fly.
We were getting so excited and had even built some new cradles with tine baby mothers to leave behind, but the monster crushed them all with its huge grab-iron claws, with the poor helpless little creatures still inside. Then you wouldn’t believe what it did! It took half our furniture with the babies in, it together with all my younger sisters and put them in another box. Which is stupid because we were going to move out anyway and could have saved it the trouble.
But it didn’t know that it missed one of the baby mother cradles so we can still make another one when he’s not looking and then nip off to that secret dream home in the woods!
At least he left us with plenty of delicious homemade food up in the loft so we won’t starve, but I don’t know what the young ones and the babies will do for food if they haven’t got us to go out looking for it. Perhaps the monster will give them some of that white junk food it gave grandma and her girls last winter.
And now we older ones are left in a big box with a load of empty furniture and our mother, who’s also getting on a bit and doesn’t cope with sudden changes anymore. She will soon start to run out of eggs and will have to be replaced. The problem is that our job is to guard the home and to go out collecting food, we’re too old to look after mum and the kids, or to clean the house and build the furniture. And it’s no good asking the men to help, they’re only interested in one thing, and we all know what that is!
But we are trying our best to adapt and get on rebuilding our shattered family. We just hope that the giant monster with his flame thrower will leave us alone now “.
Reference:
Alan Baxter
Cornell Master Beekeeper 2026
20/08/2026
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