The NY Times just had an article speculating about whether, given the existence of specific brain anatomy, bees might have some form of awareness. They rule out “why” questions, like “why am I not queen?”, but I can easily imagine that awareness might include some form of “Whew!”….as in…
“Unit has successfully avoided being eaten”
or
“Unit is wet. Unit does not have stable footing. Unit is out of correct operating temperature range…. NEW DATA: stable footing. NEW DATA: sunlight and warmth. NEW DATA: food available…. PROCESSING….”
…which really means that I’ve fished another three bees out of a bucket of rainwater and set them out to dry on dandelion flowers…
Rethorykal Questions 