Bees are highly organized insects. There are legends about their coherence in actions, the "public" and family life. Interestingly, a bee, in principle, can lead a solitary lifestyle. But he prefers to coexist in a society of his own kind. One of the questions that scientists continue to argue about is: “How do bees find their way home?” There are several explanations for this phenomenon. Let's try to figure it out.
Bee family. Uterus
Bees are not homogeneous in their social status. There is a queen bee, which is fed in a special way and looks larger than an ordinary bee. She lays eggs (sometimes two thousand units a day), is responsible for the reproduction of the genus, lives longer than all the rest. The uterus leaves the hive just a few times in its life in order to be fertilized. The rest of the time (usually five or six years) she spends inside, where she is served by other individuals.
Drones
They play the role of a kind of "sperm bank" and are intended mainly only for the continuation of the bee genus, the reproduction of offspring. A sexually mature male drone flies out of the hive several times, copulates with the uterus in flight, and then dies soon. The remaining drones live only a few months and with the onset of cold weather are driven out of the hive by other bees. Outside the house, they die from cold and hunger.
Working bees
These are barren females whose purpose is to collect pollen and nectar, to service larvae and uterus. These insects will be discussed.
Which bees find their way home?
Working individuals are precisely those bees that fly away from the hive in search of food at rather large (relative to their size) distances. How do bees find their way home? After all, a bee, collecting nectar a few kilometers from the house, returns to the place to "pass" it to feed the family, and again flies back! This happens several times a day.
Biocommunication system
Her bees use to transmit information, exchanging a variety of signals. One of them is a peculiar smell of its bee family. It helps the bee, which has a fairly developed sense of smell (for example, drones find an unfertilized uterus also by smell), to return home. American scientists conducted scientific experiments that showed how bees find a way to dainty: these insects smell over long distances. And through the use of certain aromas, they can even be trained to some extent! So, bees were taught to search for dangerous substances by smell: nitroglycerin or dynamite, for example.
Sun position
It is quite difficult for people to determine where the sun can be in cloudy weather. For bees, this is much simpler. They constantly use the position of the sun as a kind of landmark. Moreover, for bees, the presence of cloudiness does not represent any significance. The main thing is the polarization of light in the sky and certain fluctuations arising from it. So, to the question "How do bees find their way home?" you can answer like this: "In the sun." This phenomenon is similar to the action of a compass, as if built into the head of an insect. So, a working bee does not spend much time searching for a way back to the hive, but uses it as a guide. It is interesting that this insect “keeps in memory” the flying path for several days!
Landscape orientation
And yet, according to the testimony of some biologists, one of the versions of how bees find their way home is their ability to navigate the terrain, use and remember changes in the landscape. Using the experiments, scientists found that a bee can find a road at a distance of more than 10 kilometers, in any, even cloudy, weather. And for several days to keep in memory the location of the home hive.