It is not just humans that get stuck in their ways. For scientists have discovered that old bees have trouble finding their way to new hives as their learning behavior becomes increasingly inflexible.

世界上迷路的不僅僅是人類。科學家發現，“老年”蜜蜂由于行動趨于遲滯，在尋找新家時也會出現困難。

Bees are typically impressive navigators, able to wend their way home through complex landscapes after visits to flowers far removed from their nests. But researchers from Arizona State University and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences found that aging impairs the bees' ability to extinguish the memory of an unsuitable nest site even after the colony has settled in a new home.

蜜蜂一向以方向感優秀著稱，它們在院里蜂窩很遠的花朵上采蜜后，還能夠“跋山涉水”地回到家。但是亞利桑那州里大學和挪威生命科學大學的研究人員發現，重新安家蜜蜂們會隨年齡增加使得他們忘卻“老家”地址的能力受到損害。

To test how old bees adapt to a changed home location, researchers trained bees to a new nest box while their former nest was closed off. Groups composed of mature and old bees were given several days in which to learn the new home location and to extinguish the bees' memory of their unusable former nest box. The scientists then disassembled the bees' new home and forced groups of mixed-age bees to choose between three alternative nest locations, including the former nest box.

為了測試出蜜蜂能在何時適應新家地址，研究者們關閉蜜蜂“老家”，并訓練它們識別“新家”。有成年和老年蜜蜂的小組得到了幾天識別“新家”、忘卻“老家”的訓練。隨后科學家拆除“新家”，讓不同年齡的蜜蜂們在三個“家庭住址”里選擇，這里面就有它們的“老家”地址。

Old bees began flying toward the former nest site, despite the experience that should have told them that it was unusable. "Although many old bees fail in learning tasks, we also discovered that a few still perform with excellence," explains Daniel Minch, lead author of the study and a senior life sciences researcher in Norway.

“老年”蜜蜂開始飛往“老家”地址，盡管它們之前接受了識別“新家”的訓練。不過該研究帶頭人、挪威生命科學高級研究員丹尼爾說道：“盡管許多年紀大的蜜蜂學習失敗，我們還是發現其中一些表現極佳。

The scientists believe that their findings with bees offer a new means to model and understand the variability found in brain function between individuals; where some individuals' memories remain intact, while others' learning behavior becomes inflexible with age.

科學家們認為這些研究結果提供了為個體間大腦機制易變性建模及相關理解的新方法，而大腦機制易變性是指，一些個體記憶力保存完好，而另外一些個體的學習行為會隨年齡變得遲滯。