Why Do Bees Plummet Out Of The Air As Soon As Lights Are Turned Off?

late ,   fascinating videos have mobilize the Internet show bee instantaneously dropping from the air when the lights are turn off . They do this in no graceful fashion either – once the lights go down , they stop dead and plummet out of controller to the undercoat .

The most recent video was shared by Hamish Symington , a PhD student at Cambridge University , UK , studying pollination , flowers , and food security , and limn a group of bees in a container doing the accurate same behavior come across in   his previous posts . So , why is this bizarre bee - haviour happening , and how could it possibly benefit the bee ?

Quite frankly , scientists are n’t incisively sure .   Several ideas have been put forward , but there is very little enquiry in the area and only a few example of it happen .   Acommenter on Redditsuggests it could be a " navigational locking chemical mechanism " , which   activate the beehive swarm to right away lock its position in case of sudden bend of weather . Once the weather has passed , they could then return   to their beehive without the risk of being blow   to an unknown location by stormy precondition .   This could also link to how bees use theSun ’s positionto navigate back to the beehive , so once the Sun dips below the horizon , they at once stop move .

Another possibility evoke it is aprey reception , with a tail from a large piranha above them resulting in the bee leave out out of the melodic line and fall to the ground , where they would have less chance of being recognize .

Either way , the phenomenon is entrancing to look at , and a welcome   amusing fill-in for the PhD student . As he states in an earliertweet :   “ One of the funniest noises I know : the auditory sensation of a hundred bees fall out of the sky when I flex out the lights in the bee room . ”

Some bees have accommodate to fell at night , possibly as there is less competition from other pollinators , though they are mainly tropic coinage . However , whether bees can see in the wickedness calculate on how we are determine " Nox " and " moody " as some animals can see at night because they have eyes adapted to low lighting , while dark can signify a full absence of light source .

And if you ’re surprised by the discovery of night - flying bees , you should also recognise that somebees eat sum . You ’re welcome .