Alan misunderstands (or rather, Stephen didn't explain well), that the bees use dances, with orientations related to the Sun's position, to give directions to novel locations. It's not a matter of memory.

Ya, it is a pretty awesome showing of animal communication. To my best knowledge, it is one of the only animal that has been shown to have causal communication ( that they communicate ideas and not just emotions). Go bees go!

What's more amazing to me is that they can communicate precisely to other bees where something is in 3-dimensions (direction, distance and height) by using a waggle dance. It's baffling that such a complex and accurate means of communication can evolve in such a small animal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Bee colonies could be sentient. Each bee a cell- the brain thinks thousands of times slower than us though.