Honey bees are a great study system to learn about the animal kingdom. They dance (albeit sloppily), they make jelly that turns their larvae into queens, they have crazy tongues … I could go on. Now, researchers have found, honeybees can add.

In a paper out today in Science Advances, a team led by Adrian Dyer at RMIT University in Melbourne put the honey-makers’ arithmetic skills to the test. Instead of written numbers and symbols, they used colors to communicate with the bees. Blue for a