What seems like one of the most peaceful places on Earth is a warzone for bees to fly through. So, how do they do it?
Human beings rarely consider how dangerous it must be to be an insect blowing through the wind.
What may seem like tiny, harmless flowers and seeds are cannonballs and waving skyscrapers to passing honey bees.
This is a situation that bees, and other pollinators, deal with on a daily basis. As they gather pollen and nectar to make their honey, they constantly risk their hides while doing so.
But, just like a human being normalizes traveling 80 MPH in a metal box around other metal box owners that could potentially kill them in a millisecond, bees have similar methods of dealing with the stimulus.
The mannerisms of honey bees have been researched for years and years. Although scientists have been able to understand how bees travel on particularly windy days and how they navigate through tight spaces, nobody has really been able to understand how they move around moving obstacles in the wind.
So, in order to dig a little deeper, Dr. Nicholas Burnett conducted a study at the University of California, Davis to find some conclusions.
Dr. Burnett created a "bee obstacle course," in which he spaced four rods one inch apart on an oscillating platform and created a one-way wind tunnel in an enclosed space. Dr. Burnett released a bee into the chamber and discovered that they are able to analyze and predict the movement of objects, and they adjust their flight patterns to reflect that prediction.