Honeybees possess advanced sensory capacities and motor skills, enabling them to perceive their environment in diverse colors, shapes, and patterns. These sensory abilities significantly influence behaviors such as foraging, playing a crucial role in their survival. The Honeybee Y-maze offers a platform to explore these capabilities and examine related behaviors using a straightforward two-choice paradigm with different visual cues. Furthermore, honeybees exhibit sophisticated memory and the flexibility to adjust their preferences based on cues like temporal context (Zhang et al., 2006). This apparatus can be utilized to study learning behaviors and memory through various experimental protocols, such as reversal learning and discrimination learning.

The Honeybee Y-maze features a conventional Y design with a starting area that splits into two choice arms. An aperture in the start area allows the honeybee to enter the maze. The choice arms are equipped with placements for visual cues and a micropipette in the center of the wall to hold food rewards. Other tools used for evaluating cognitive and learning behaviors in honeybees include the Bumblebee Y-maze, the Bee Reward Expectations Apparatus, and the Bee Radial Arm.