The route to the goal and back again.

Abstract Finding the way to a familiar feeding ground and back again for shelter is understandably widespread among many groups of animals. This chapter shows that the bees and wasps learn as much as they need in order to know the direction of home, and they recognize places wherever they have learned them, as they do with small cues on a target. When the destinations are shuffled, they learn the positions of possible places to look, exactly as in the Y-choice apparatus. They are able to extend the scale of the exploratory flights, and build up a memory of the vector directions to two or more goals from a larger number of landmarks, as was inferred by Baerends for an experienced wasp taking a caterpillar to one of several nests from any point in her territory. Also, bees fly through complicated mazes. Now that the superficial stages of visual perception are known in outline, it should be possible to release well-trained bees back into a foraging area and see how they behave, especially in relation to cues at decision points.