HONEY BEES


When a honey bee finds a source of food (flowers) it flies back to the hive and performs a 'dance' to tell it's fellow bees the distance (indicated by the speed of the dance) and the angle relative to the sun to the food (indicted by the movement while dancing)


They can calculate angles and communicate it to other bees in the hive. It was found that when a food source was placed on the far side of the mountain and the bees colony on the other, the bees communicated an angle relative to themselves that they had not flown (they had actually flown around the mountain)


What's more amazing is that when a cloud obscures the sun, bees use the patterns of ultraviolet polarized light in the sky to determine the sun's location. (they are sensitive to ultraviolet light and have color vision)


And even when an overcast obscures both sun and sky, bees automatically switch to a third navigational system based on their mental map of the landmarks in their home range.

Honey bees know that the world is round, and include this in their typical food finding dances


'Field' bees visit as many as 1500 flowers to fill up their honey stomachs (when full, these weigh as much as the bee itself)


Then they break down the nectar to smaller sugars and regurgitate (or vomit if you like) the 'honey' to the 'house' bee


The 'house' bee then stores and seals the honey with wax into the hive cell (from where humans steal it)


Contrary to popular belief, not all bees are social, there are also solitary bees that live alone, social bees and parasitic bees


There are over 20000 species of bees in the world, most have not been well studied.