How bees learn to fly

Bees learn directional flight like pilots. Before bees collect honey 10 kilometers away from the hive, they must learn to fly along a more complicated route that is farther away from the hive.

Researchers in the UK and US fitted more than 600 young bees with miniature radar transmitters and placed them in a colony of more than 10,000 bees to track their movements. The researchers found that the young bees initially flew in a straight line outward from the hive. After flying 10 to 30 meters, they turned around and flew back along the same route.

Researchers say that bees fly along longer routes in the three weeks before they start collecting honey to familiarize themselves with ground landmarks. The researchers found that the longer the route the bees take for directional flight, the higher they fly, which apparently helps them feel how far away they are from the hive. From the bees' perspective, flying higher is likely to mean that the terrain is less clear, while the closer the flight altitude is to the ground when approaching the hive, the clearer the terrain is.

The ability of bees to fly long distances has long intrigued researchers, and they apparently use the position of the sun and surface features as navigational landmarks.

The researchers believe their study opens up research into other insects' ability to learn to fly.

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