Tropical bees fly for miles and miles
Tiny transmitters glued to the backs of tropical bees have allowed scientists to track the exotic insects as they fly for miles in search of rare flowers.
Some of the iridescent blue-green orchid bees were found to buzz tirelessly for surprisingly long distances. One even crossed the shipping lanes of the Panama Canal, a journey of at least five kilometres.
The study has given researchers new insights into the role of bees in tropical forest ecosystems.
Working in Panama, scientists trapped 17 orchid bees of the common species Exaerete frontalis and attached a 300 milligram radio beacon onto the back of each.
The signals they transmitted were used to track their movements in and around the dense forest where they lived.
Professor Martin Wikelski, from Princeton University, US, and the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, said: "By following the radio signals, we discovered that male orchid bees spent most of their time in small core areas, but could take off and visit areas farther away.
"One male even crossed over the shipping lanes in the Panama Canal, flying at least five kilometres, and returned a few days later."
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
That fly looks really scary. I think I'm going to have nightmares.
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Oh my, that looks really scary.
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That's a really scary looking bug. I hope I don't encounter one like that in our country.
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That's a really scary looking bug. I hope I don't encounter one like that in our country.
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