Long-term habituation of an appetitive reflex in the honeybee

We examined habituation of an appetitive component of the honeybee's feeding behaviour, the proboscis extension reflex. This reflex is elicited by touching one antenna with a droplet of sugar water. The response decrement was quantified by determining the number of trials necessary to abolish any visible response. Measurements of the time dependent spontaneous recovery demonstrated that habituation persists for at least 10 min, representing a simple form of short-term memory. When repeated training sessions were applied over 2 days, a long-term memory for habituation to appetitive sensory stimuli, lasting for 24 h was established.