Stuff about Bees ... just because they're cool

"Bees ... by virtue of a certain geometrical forethought ... know that the hexagon is greater than the square and the triangle and will hold more honey for the same expenditure of material."
- Pappus of Alexandria (flourished in the first half of the 4^th Century AD)

"We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in; these bees, as our Virgil says,
pack close the flowing honey,
And swell their cells with nectar sweet."
- Seneca in a letter to his friend Lucilius (60 AD)

How geometry solves architectural problems for bees and wasps - July, 2023
How do honeybees handle geometric frustration? - December, 2022
Machine learning predicts honeybee swarms - July, 2020
Bee photos by community scientists contribute to data for conservation efforts - July, 2020
Tools for bees - April, 2017
Happy bumblebees - November, 2016
Better than Bees - September, 2014
Dancing bees reveal better land - May, 2014
Virtual bees help to unravel complex causes of colony decline - March, 2014
How bees see a steady landing - November, 2013
Spatio-temporal dynamics of bumblebees foraging under predation risk - August, 2011
In-vivo two-photon imaging of the honey bee antennal lobe - September, 2010
Independence and Interdependence in the Nest-site Choice by Honeybee Swarms: Agent-based Models, Analytical Approaches and Pattern Formation - September, 2009

The Physics of Bees

Bees and Electric Fields
- Static electricity helps parasitic nematodes glom onto victims - April, 2023
- Insect swarms might generate as much electric charge as storm clouds - October, 2022
- Power lines may mess with honeybees' behavior and ability to learn - November, 2019
- Bees May Use Electricity to Communicate - March, 2013
- ... and flowers
  - Flowers may be big antennas for bees' electrical signals - Science, April, 2024
  - Detection and Learning of Floral Electric Fields by Bumblebees - Science, April, 2013
  - Electric fields of flowers stimulate the sensory hairs of bumble bees - PNAS, June, 2016
  - The bee, the flower, and the electric field: electric ecology and aerial electroreception J. Comp. Physiology, June, 2017
  - The buzz and the bees: Flowers use electrical fields to communicate with insects ... with voltage indicating pollen levels - February, 2016,
    Detection and Learning of Floral Electric Fields by Bumblebees - April, 2013 Bees Can Sense the Electric Fields of Flowers,
    Bumblebees sense electric fields in flowers - February, 2013
  - Bumblebees' Electric Sense
  - Bumble-bees use their fuzz to detect electric fields - June, 2016
Bees and Magnetic Fields
- Linking magnetite in the abdomen of honey bees to a magnetoreceptive function - March, 2017
- The magnetic sense of honey bees - analyses of underlying mechanisms and potential function - V. Lambinet, Thesis, SFU 2017
- Bees and their magnetic superpower - May, 2017
- Honey bees navigate using magnetic abdomens - March, 2017
- Catch the Buzz - Honey Bees Navigate Using Magnetic Abdomens - April, 2017 in Bee Culture - The Magazine of American Beekeeping
- Magnetic Sensing through the Abdomen of the Honey bee - March, 2016
- Does the Earth's Magnetic Field Serve as a Reference for Alignment of the Honeybee Waggle Dance? - December, 2014
- Meanwhile, for other insects ....
  - Fruit flies' ability to sense magnetic fields thrown into doubt - August, 2023
Bees and Thermodynamics
- Here's what triggers giant honeybees to do the wave - September, 2022
- Some bee species defend their hives with giant balls of heat - March, 2021
- Murder Hornets vs. Honeybees: A Swarm of Bees Can Cook Invaders Alive - New York Times, May, 2020
Bees and Optics
- Bee Vision
- Bumblebee eyes
- Birds, Bees and Human Visual Perception - October, 2020
- Life Through A Bee's Eyes: New Software Replicates Animal Vision - December, 2019
- What do bees 'see' and how does it inform our understanding of vision? - May, 2019
- How Well Can Honey Bees See? - April, 2017
- Want a better camera? Just copy bees and their extra light-sensing eyes - July, 2017
- Mechanisms, functions and ecology of colour vision in the honeybee - May, 2014
- Honey Bee Vision in Relation to Flower Patterns - January, 2011
Bees and Flight
"Aerodynamically the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway" - Mary Kay Ash
- Quantum systems and the flight of the bee - May, 2022
- Einstein had an interest in how bees navigate as evidenced by the recently found (May, 2021) Long-lost letter from Einstein discusses link between physics and biology - 70 years before evidence emerges (see also Einstein letter reveals interest in animal navigation). The letter is discussed in some detail in Einstein, von Frisch and the honeybee: a historical letter comes to light. The letter was to Karl von Frisch who won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of how bees communicate a route to nectar through the waggle dance. Test your german by checking out the original 1946 article Die Sprache der Bienen und ihre Nutzanwendung in der Landwirtschaft or you can get a sense of the excitement this generated from the 1949 article in Nature.
- Bumblebee Flight Defies Physics (the article argues against the title?) - July, 2021
- How Do Bees Fly? - May, 2018
- This myth people keep quoting about how bees shouldn't be able to fly is scientifically incorrect - here's why - December, 2017
- Maths explains how bees can stay airborne with such tiny wings - July, 2017
- Bumblebees In Turbulence - January, 2016
Bees and Reasoning/Social Behaviour
- Honeybees waggle to communicate. But to do it well, they need dance lessons, Complex learned social behavior discovered in bee's 'waggle dance' - March, 2023
- How do honeybees handle geometric frustration? - December, 2022
- Bumblebees get a buzz out of playing with balls, study finds - October, 2022
- Bees can link symbols to numbers - June, 2019
- Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction - February, 2019
- Bees join an elite group of species that understands the concept of zero as a number [Science paper] - June, 2018
- Are they watching you? The tiny brains of bees and wasps can recognise faces - August, 2018
- Tools for bees - April, 2017
- Happy bumblebees - November, 2016

And, to be fair,

Bees Get All the Love. Won't Someone Think of the Moths? (June, 2023). Maybe they are also worth a second look to see how physics affects their behaviour.