There's a Really Weird Effect When Honeybees Fly Over a Mirror

The way honeybees zoom through the air was noticed by Herbert Heran and Martin Lindauer in 1963.

If there were waves and ripples on the surface of the water, a group of bees could only make it to the other side.

The insects would lose altitude if the lake was mirror-smooth.

A follow-up study has added a fascinating insight into the flying strategies of honeybees, after the findings supported the idea that honeybees use visual cues to navigate during flight.

In a more ethical way, researchers have shown that honeybees watch the ground to regulate their altitude in flight.

The experiments took place inside a 220-centimeter-long (87 inches) rectangular tunnel that was placed outdoors with mirrors on the ceiling and floor.

The honeybees would fly from one side of the tunnel to a sweet treat on the other side if all the mirrors were covered.

The bees easily made it across the tunnel when the ceiling was pulled back to reveal a mirror.

The crashes began when the floor became a mirror. After about 15 inches of flight, the bees' altitude would begin to drop and they would collide with the glass bottom.

When the ceiling and floor were mirrors, the bees would lose altitude after flying for only eight centimeters, hitting the ground soon after.

The findings are similar to the spatial disorientation that pilots experience when they can't see their ground speed.

Human senses can trick us into thinking we are still in the air. Airplane instruments help us overcome spatial illusions and keep our aircraft aloft even when there is no texture or shadow on the ground or water below.

honeybees don't have a backup system Their flight from the first half of the tunnel was interrupted by a dramatic plunge when a mirror floor only existed in the second half.

The double mirror condition allowed us to get closer to the flight conditions of an open sky flight above a calm water surface.

Our results agree with theirs when it comes to honeybees losing altitude in the absence of a visual flow.

It seems that bees use visual signals on the ground to maintain their altitude as opposed to visual signals in the sky.

When the ground is no longer giving the insects a baseline, researchers think they drop lower in altitude to see if they can regain it.

They crash into the ground when they think it is farther away.

If the bees were given a bigger visual field, they could have used other signals to help maintain altitude. When flying across a lake or a tunnel, there are few alternatives for the insects to gauge their altitude.

Fruit flies don't use the same techniques to control their altitude as a similar experiment found.

Humans at high altitudes are often told not to look down. If a honeybee were to follow those instructions, it would crash.

The study was published in a journal.