New research suggests that swarming bees may affect the weather.
Researchers found that honeybees can produce as much atmospheric electricity as a storm. Dust can play an important role in shaping weather patterns, and their impact may need to be included in future climate models.
A positive charge can be picked up by insects' tiny bodies, either from the air molecule against their rapidly beating wings or from landing on an electric surface. The effects were thought to be small. A new study shows that insects can produce a lot of electricity.
A single bee is making an army of clones.
There are many un-suspected links that can exist over different spatial scales, ranging from microbes in the soil and plant-pollinating interactions to insect swarms and the global electric circuit, according to the first author.
When the bumps and pits rub over each other, there is static electricity. electrons jump from one surface to another, leaving one surface positively charged while the other becomes negatively charged The charges may leap if the transfer across the two ionized surfaces is not stopped.
It is said that Benjamin Franklin demonstrated this phenomenon when he and his son flew a kite during a storm.
Spiders spin negatively charged webs that attract and ensnare the positively charged bodies of their prey because of the electrostatic effects that emerge throughout the insect world.
The researchers want to know if honeybees can change the electric field of our atmosphere. In the 3 minutes that the insects were in the air, the researchers found that the potential was increased to 100 volts per meter. The scientists found that the charge density of a large honeybee swarm was six times greater than a dust storm and eight times greater than a storm cloud.
Scientists found that denser insect clouds meant bigger electrical fields, which allowed them to model other swarming insects.
The scientists said that Locusts swarm to "biblical scales" and can pack up to 80 million of them into less than half a square mile. The model the researchers used predicted that swarms of locusts would create densities of electric charge similar to those created by storms.
Even though the insects are unlikely to produce storms of their own, they can still have an effect on the weather. Dust and pollutants can be ionized by electric fields in the air. Knowing how dust moves and where it settles is important to understand a region's climate.
It is important to know how aware the whole natural world is of electricity in the atmosphere because it can seem like it lives solely in physics. There are many puzzling problems, such as why large dust particles are found far from the Sahara.
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