3. To test the idea, Esch and his team tried to deceive bees into giving false information to hive mates. They started by setting a cup of syrup about 36 feet from a hive and let a honeybee eat from the cup. Instead of letting the bee fly directly to the hive and blck, they forced it to fly through a 10-foot-long plastic tunnel lined with a random pattern of half-inch black and white squares. According to Esch, the desing was intended to trick the bee into thinking it had covered much more territory than it actually had by increasing the number of landmarks-black squares-it was exposed to.