In a departure from the articles that usually appear in Biology Letters, this study on the foraging behavior of bees was largely done by students at Blackawton Primary School. While the students had support from University College London's Beau Lotto and their headmaster Dave Strudwick, they came up with the questions, hypotheses, and experimental design. In addition, they did the data analysis, drew the figures, and wrote the paper, though Lotto wrote the abstract to introduce the unorthodox paper. From their study, the students report that "bumble-bees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from." They also conclude that "science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before."
Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science is impressed. "It's a refreshing approach to science education, in that it actually involves doing science," he says. At The Guardian, Alom Shaha adds that the students are "lucky," saying "they were given a wonderful opportunity to experience something that most people fail to appreciate at school: science is a creative activity."