Bumblebees have been observed rolling tiny wooden balls for no obvious reward. Which raises an important question: is play even more deeply woven into life than we thought?
What could be more wonderful than discovering that a bumblebee may enjoy a ball game?
Perhaps not a full eleven-a-side fixture (no tiny shin pads, sadly), but still: bumblebees, presented with small wooden balls, have been observed rolling them repeatedly – despite receiving no food reward, practical benefit or obvious evolutionary prize for doing so.
In other words, they appeared to be doing it because, in some mysterious bee-ish way, it was fun.
This was the subject of a 2022 study led by researchers at Queen Mary University of London and published in Animal Behaviour. The team set up experiments in which bumblebees could travel to a feeding area without touching the balls at all. The balls were simply there, placed beside the route with some fixed in place and others loose and moveable. And the bees, splendid little creatures that they are, chose to roll the loose ones again and again.
Across the experiments, the researchers observed 45 bees performing 910 ball-rolling actions over 54 hours. In a later test, bees were trained to associate ball-rolling with a particular coloured chamber – and then chose that colour again even when the balls had been removed.
There were some other interesting details:
Now, the researchers were careful not to overclaim. We cannot after all climb inside the mind of a bee. But the study did find that ball-rolling met several recognised criteria for animal play:
When we think of animals playing, we tend to picture the obvious candidates: puppies wrestling, dolphins leaping, monkeys chasing one another,
Insects are not usually creatures that come to mind. Bees, especially, are famous for work. We think of them almost as machines, as nature’s tiny productivity bots: collecting, pollinating, navigating, communicating and building.
A bee rolling a wooden ball is therefore a wonderfully disruptive image, which disarms our presumptions. It suggests that even creatures we associate with pure industriousness may have room in their lives for activity that is not immediately useful.
This is significant because human play is often misunderstood in exactly the same way.
We tend to justify play by asking what it is for. Does it improve creativity? Does it build stronger teams? Does it reduce stress? Does it help children develop? Does it support learning, trust, confidence and resilience?
The answer to all of these is yes… Play can do extraordinary things. It can sharpen thinking, strengthen bonds and unlock energy in people of every age. At Sharky + George, we see that constantly: in children’s adventures, grown-up parties, corporate experiences and moments when people find themselves completely absorbed in a game.
But play is not powerful because it is secretly work in disguise: play works because, first of all, it is play.
One of the simplest definitions of play is that it is enjoyable, voluntary and done for its own sake.
That does not mean play has no benefits, but that the benefits often arrive precisely because we are not straining after them. Play creates a different kind of space: one where ordinary pressure lifts, and people – or possibly bees – explore what they can do.
That is what makes the bumblebee study so delightful. The bees were not being drilled or chasing a sugar pellet. They were not optimising their pollen strategy or attending a mandatory away-day called “Bees 2.0: Rolling Towards Excellence.”
They just encountered an object that could be moved, and some of them moved it for the sake of it.
In play there must be room to choose and to explore. Without that element of willingness, play becomes training, or the dreaded “organised fun”.
Whether you are a child building a den, a group of colleagues solving a puzzle, a family racing across a garden, or a bumblebee nudging a tiny wooden ball around a lab, play has a way of drawing us into the moment.
At Sharky + George, our Transformational Power of Play framework centres on three conditions: Space, Connection and Flow. When those are present, play can spark Ingenuity, deepen Belonging and restore Vitality – in families, friendships, teams and organisations alike.
Read more about these ideas in our free white paper The Transformational Power of Play.
Source: Hiruni Samadi Galpayage Dona et al., “Do bumble bees play?”, Animal Behaviour, 2022. The study found that ball-rolling by bumblebees fulfilled recognised behavioural criteria for animal play, including being voluntary, repeated, rewarding and not directly linked to immediate survival.
