Discover 14 posts about bee science
A 1934 calculation said bumblebees shouldn't fly. The math assumed fixed wings. Bee wings rotate, creating vortices that generate lift no airplane uses.
A bee flies up to 8 km from the hive and returns to within centimeters of the entrance. The toolkit: a sun compass, landmarks, and possibly magnetic sensing.
The honey bee genome was sequenced in 2006. Fewer immunity genes than expected, more olfactory receptors than any insect studied. The implications were big.
Forager bees sleep 5-8 hours per night in consolidated bouts, with antennal drooping and muscle relaxation. Young nurse bees skip sleep - they work 24/7.
Melittin, the main compound in bee venom, destroys cell membranes on contact. Most people swell. About 2% develop systemic reactions. The immunology is wild.
Fanning workers, water carriers, heater bees, and 0.5-degree precision with no thermostat. A colony runs climate control that would impress an HVAC engineer.
Thousands of drones converge 10-40 meters above the same spot every afternoon. GPS confirms these areas persist for decades. Nobody knows how they find them.
Bees don't build hexagons - they build cylinders. Heat softens wax and surface tension pulls them into hexagons. Proving this geometry optimal took 2,063 years.
Bees don't eat raw pollen - they ferment it. Lactic acid bacteria transform it into bee bread with 3x the nutritional availability. It takes about 3 weeks.
A summer worker bee lives roughly 42 days. She holds six different jobs, each triggered by hormonal shifts. Winter bees live six months doing almost nothing.
A queen breeder grafts 12-hour-old larvae into wax cups with a toothpick-sized tool. The industry produces over a million queens a year, mostly in three states.
A swarm of 10,000 bees with no leader chooses the best nest site through a voting system. Scout bees dance for their preferred option until consensus emerges.
Eight core bacterial species colonize every honey bee gut. Disrupt them with antibiotics and the bee becomes vulnerable to pathogens it normally shrugs off.
Melittin destroys cell membranes. Apamin blocks potassium channels. The venom causing anaphylaxis is being tested against cancer, arthritis, and Parkinson's.
