Do bees have culture?

 We used to think of bees as superorganisms. The queen did all the thinking and the workers just followed pheromonic orders.

This is how we got the bugs in Starship Troopers.

Now things are more nuanced. Some species of bees commit regicide...intentionally killing a queen who isn't laying healthy enough eggs and replacing her.

It's become more and more clear that a bee hive is really run by the workers (I use this when doing a deep dive into verr culture, although the verr are more like naked molerats than bees).

And now we have evidence of social learning. Social learning is when an animal learns by watching somebody else do it. If you watch a YouTube tutorial, you are intentionally engaging in social learning. Dogs and horses can both learn by watching a more experienced animal perform.

Bees do it too. For example, if you teach a bumblebee to solve a simple puzzle (with a food reward) and then let another bumblebee watch, the second bumblebee will solve the puzzle much faster.

Honeybees seem to teach the waggle dance to younger workers.

If you have social learning, you have culture, because culture is the practices you learn by watching others.

So, bees have culture. Each hive may be slightly different in  how they do things. Culture serves the purpose of increasing survival rates by varying behaviors and allowing for "memetic selection" - the ways which work best survive. Thankfully, unlike genes, social behaviors can be learned.