Humans and bees share genetic commonalities tied to social behavior, according to a new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in findings that suggest the foundations of social connection transcend species.
While bees are often seen as inherently social creatures, they display a range of sociability, much like humans. The genetic and molecular drivers of social connections remain poorly understood elements of how creatures interact, but the new research, published in PLOS Biology, points to deep evolutionary linkages that may date back to distant genetic ancestors.
Understanding the Bee Brain
For the study, researchers barcoded and tracked adult honeybees from three colonies by affixing barcodes to their bodies. The hives, designed with glass walls for easy observation, were monitored with automated tracking technology.
“Social insects are ideal for whole-colony behavioral tracking, and the technology is such that we can monitor what each bee is doing throughout the majority of her life,” said lead author Ian Traniello. “In this study, we sought to push things a step forward, thinking, ‘We can follow all of these animals, we know who they’re socially engaging via food-sharing interactions, we know how they move and where they spend their time.”
The intensive behavioral data collected was then compared with genetic information from the bees to look for correlations between behavior and genes.
The Genetics of Social Behavior
“The honey bee molecular toolkit is vast and growing, and we can also explore the structure of the genome or gene expression patterns within the brain as they relate to variation in social interactivity,” Traniello explained. “We asked: ‘How can we bring these technologies together, to ask general questions about the molecular underpinnings of social organization and test the hypothesis that some of these features might be conserved across species?’ And that’s exactly what we did.”
Researchers sequenced the genomes of 357 bees, identifying 18 genetic variants linked to a behavior called trophallaxis—the sharing of liquid food with nestmates. Two genes in particular, neuroligin-2 and nmdar2, contained several sociability-linked variants. Notably, prior human research has also tied these genes to autism.
To expand their analysis, the team performed transcriptome sequencing to examine brain gene expression. They identified nearly 900 additional genes that showed higher expression in bees engaging more frequently with nestmates.
Persistent Molecular Roots
“It is a central feature of all societies that group members often engage with one another, but vary in their tendency to do so,” the authors say. “Combining automated monitoring of social interactions, DNA sequencing, and brain transcriptomics in honey bee colonies, we identified evolutionarily conserved molecular roots of sociability shared across phylogenetically distinct species, including humans.”
Though humans and bees diverged more than 600 million years ago, the study suggests that some of the same genetic mechanisms continue to shape social behavior in both species.
The findings indicate that evolution has preserved the molecular building blocks of social life for hundreds of millions of years, despite vast differences in biology. By tracing these roots further, scientists may gain deeper insight into how genetic factors shape the way humans interact and connect.
The paper, “Genetic Variation Influences Food-Sharing Sociability in Honey Bees,” appeared in PLOS Biology on September 16, 2025.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.