Teeny Radar Antenna Tracks the Flight of the Bumblebee

For the first time, scientists have tracked the flight paths of bumblebees over the span of their entire lives.

Not only do the results help biologists better understand bee behavior, but because the insects play a critical role in pollinating crops, understanding their movements could improve how farmers manage agriculture.

Joseph Woodgate of Queen Mary University of London and his colleagues used radar to monitor the daily flight patterns of four different bees, from the time they first left their nests to the time they ceased to return.

Because only one bee could be tracked at a time with the radar, the researchers set out four different colonies at four different times, tracking one bee each time.

"For the first time, we have been able to record the complete 'life story' of a bee," study coordinator Lars Chittka said in a press release. "From the first time she saw the light of day, entirely naive to the world around her, to being a seasoned veteran forager in an environment full of sweet nectar rewards and dangerous threats, to her likely death at the hands of predators, or getting lost because she has ventured too far from her native nest."

To monitor the insects, the scientists affixed a radar transponder just 16 millimeters tall to each bee using superglue. The antenna didn't harm the bee or interfere with its normal activities as it spent its days foraging a field of wild flowers and thistle in Hertfordshire, UK.

From those four bees, the scientists gathered data from 244 flights, adding up to 15,000 minutes of flight and covering 111 miles.

Previous studies had shown that foraging bumblebees tended to explore the area looking for food or exploit it, settling down to harvest. But how long they explored vs exploited was unknown.

"One of the most striking results to emerge," the researchers say in their paper published today in the journal PLOS ONE, "is the large degree to which our bees differed from one another."

All the flights undertaken by four different bees (panels A, B, C, and D) throughout their lives. Green indicates exploratory paths; blue shows looping flights close to the nest; yellow and orange show the bees exploiting good forage.

For example, Bee 1 spent a much higher proportion of her time exploiting -- more than 90 percent. But Bees 2 and 3 spent more time exploring. Bees 1 and 3 didn't travel as far as 2 and 4 in their explorations. Bees 1 and 4 switched the destination of their flights over the course of their foraging and never returned to the first location they foraged.

Read more at Discovery News