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How do bees remember their way home?
Bees navigate home by 'reading the sky'
Sydney (IANS) - How do bees display this incredible knack of navigating
cross-country? Scientists have now hit upon the reason for this -- bees are sky
readers!
Bees can home in on their hives from 11 km away, thanks to their ability to
remember landmarks and read information from the sky.
Led by Prof ShaoWu Zhang from The Centre of Excellence in Vision Science, the
research team released bees in Canberra, where the landmarks include Black
Mountain, Mount Ainslie and Lake Burley Griffin, etc.
"We found that from four kilometres onwards, honeybees homing from the eastern
direction return to their hives sooner than bees from the north, west and
south," says Prof. Zhang, according to a Vision Science statement.
"Also, when we released these bees from seven kilometres and above, only those
from the east can successfully find their way back.
"This is because bees released from the east can see Black Mountain in the
opposite direction. It also helps if they are released in the early afternoon,
when the sun is situated in the west, too."
In the study, the team caught foragers as they returned to their hives and
displaced them in a black box. The bees were then released in novel spots at
various distances up to 13 kilometres in north, east, south and west.
"In their forage trips, one way that honeybees use to find their way home is by
storing distance and directional information when they venture out," Prof.
Zhang says. "In other words, they try to go back the way they came.
"Catching them as soon as they reach their hives and placing them in a black
box sets their pre-calculated information back to zero, so the bees are
deprived of any directional information in relation to the hive.
"By doing this, we can confirm that they are relying solely on knowledge that
they have gathered about the landscape to travel home," said Prof Zhang.
The team also used new technology to track the bee's journey. They placed Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID) tags on each bee and left a receiver at the
hive entrance.
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