Honey Bees Have Their Own Tiny Highways in the Sky

Professor Pip sat in the warm meadow beside an old wooden beehive, his bushy tail curled neatly around his paws. The air buzzed gently. Bees zipped past his whiskers, in and out of the hive, on important bee business.

He pulled his pocket notebook labeled Notes out of his coat. Then his shiny brass compass.

"Today," he said, "we are going to ask: how does a bee find her way back to the very same flower every single trip?"

Mia and Leo sat cross-legged in the grass with their friend Asha. They watched a tiny bee land on a clover, then zoom off in a perfect straight line.

"GPS?" guessed Leo.

"Closer than you think!" cried Pip, paw-clapping. "Watch this. Mia — your eyes closed. Leo, walk her from the apple tree to the gate."

Mia closed her eyes. Leo led her by the paw — past the big oak (TAP — Leo touched the bark), past the picnic bench (TAP — Leo tapped the wood), to the gate.

"Now try the same path with no taps," said Pip.

This time Mia wobbled. She bumped Leo's elbow. She went the wrong direction for a second. "It was MUCH harder!" she said.

"Curiouser and curiouser, eh?" said Pip. "Mia, you just discovered landmark navigation. With the tree-tap and the bench-tap, you knew exactly where you were. Without them — wobbly."

He flipped open his notebook. "Some scientists in Germany just discovered that honey bees do the very same thing. They followed two-hundred-and-fifty-five different bee flights with little drone-cameras. Each bee picked her own favorite route. And here's the wonderful part — when the bees flew past a special landmark, like one tall lonely tree, they flew within just a few centimeters of the exact same spot every single time. That's smaller than your hand!"

"That's like… not even one finger off!" said Asha.

"But," said Pip, holding up a paw, "over a wide-open cornfield where there are no special landmarks — only rows and rows of identical corn — the bees got a little wobbly, just like Mia. They still made it. But not as exactly."

Leo's face lit up. "Oh! Like when I find my way to the bathroom in the dark — I touch the bookcase, then the door frame, then I know I'm at the bathroom!"

"Exactly right!" Pip beamed. "Every bee a tiny pilot, with her own little route stitched together from landmarks — a tree here, a flower-patch there, the corner of the barn over yonder. Two hundred bees, two hundred different sky-roads."

He gave Asha the brass compass. "Now — without looking down at the ground — try walking from this beehive to your favorite tree. Notice which landmarks your eyes use along the way. You're flying your own little bee-route."