Do honey bees have their own unique flight routes? Scientists reveal surprising truth

Researchers have discovered that each bee follows its own highly consistent flight path. They also found that bees follow their path so precisely that they flew only centimetres from the path they had flown before. Bees' precision comes as they fix landmarks like trees, which help them to keep on track, while uniform areas such as cornfields lead to more variation. This research was done after tracking honey bees in the wild using a drone-based system.

The finding was discovered at the University of Freiburg, indicating that individual honey bees follow their own highly consistent flight routes, helping them to repeat with remarkable accuracy. The study was led by neurobiologist and behavioural biologist Prof. Dr Andrew Straw, using a drone to keep surveillance on honey bees travelling between their hive and a food source located nearly 120 meters away in an agricultural setting.

Fast Lock-On (FLO) Tracking method

To track them, the scientist used a method called 'Fast Lock-On (FLO) Tracking'. The method involves attaching a small reflective marker to each bee and then using a computer on the drone to examine reflected light, identifying and tracking a bee within milliseconds after it flies.

The findings showed that individual honey bees tend to follow their own preferred flight routes and adhere to them with remarkable precision while travelling to and from food sources. Researchers also found evidence suggesting that bees rely on landmarks and other features of the surrounding environment to navigate their journeys.

"Our tracking system makes it possible for the first time to record high-resolution 3D flight paths of honey bees in natural landscapes," explains Straw. "Our recordings show that each bee has its own preferred route and flies it very precisely. You could almost say that each bee has its own personality."

For the study, scientists examined 255 flight paths recorded near Kaiserstuhl, Germany. The research site featured hedgerows, a cornfield and a tree positioned between the hive and the feeding area, making a straight-line route impossible. "We found a high degree of precision in the flight paths. Individual bees repeated their individual flight paths nearly exactly on several flights. They often fly just a few centimetres away from their previous paths," Straw emphasises.

WATCH:

The bees displayed the highest level of route consistency when flying near prominent landmarks, especially the tree. In contrast, their flight paths varied the most over the cornfield, where the landscape provided fewer distinctive visual markers for navigation. "Our results suggest that visual landmarks aid the bees' navigation and increase the precision of their flight paths," explains Straw.

The discovery also sheds new light on the famous waggle dance, which is being used by honey bees to send a message about the location of food sources to other members of the colony. However, the directional information in the waggle dance can divert to around 30 degrees. "It was previously known that the directional information in the waggle dance is not entirely accurate," explains Straw. For food sources approximately 100 meters away, the directional information in the waggle dance can deviate by around 30 degrees.

The study suggests that the apparent imprecision of the honey bee waggle dance is not a reflection of poor navigational ability. Instead, bees demonstrate a high degree of accuracy when travelling to destinations they are already familiar with.

Researcher Straw noted that the findings show individual bees navigate known locations with remarkable precision. Even in areas where their routes varied the most, they strayed from their preferred flight paths by only a few degrees. According to the researchers, this indicates that the limitations of the waggle dance do not stem from weak navigation skills. Rather, bees are far more spatially accurate and better oriented than their dance-based communication alone would imply.