The Australian Broadcasting Corp. reports Professor Mandyam Srinivasan of Queensland University and colleague Marie Dacke trained the honeybees to count by placing sugar water just past a number of regularly spaced yellow stripes inside a narrow tunnel.

The bees quickly learned to which marker they needed to fly in order to find the food. 

“After training, the bees were individually tested by removing the food reward, and observing their searching behavior in the tunnel to determine which landmark they had associated most strongly with the reward during the training," Srinivasan said.

The researchers say they are puzzled as to why the bees can’t seem to grasp the concept beyond the fourth marker.

Professor Srinivasan says he has also found bees can learn to recognize colors and smells, and can be trained to fly through complicated mazes.

"The more we look at these creatures that have a brain the size of a sesame seed, the more astonished we are," he added.

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