Why don't bees ever ask for directions?

Imagine the next electronic breakthrough that could replace our smartphones. Perhaps most of you imagined that the future of smartphones would be an electronic microcircuit that could be implanted to work with your mind. Instead of pressing a button, you would only have to think of an action and the mini phone implanted in you would do the rest.

It may sound crazy, but Mother Nature has already beaten us to this goal. In fact, various organisms such as bacteria, algae, birds, fish, insects, and baby sea turtles have a “bio-compass” to detect magnetic fields. The detection of magnetic fields is called magnetoreception.

Magnetoreception is the ability of some living beings to detect and orient the magnetic field, thus obtaining information about direction and latitude.

Of all the organisms thought to use magnetoreception, bees (Apis mellifera) seem to be the most curious. Bees are capable of sensing a magnetic field and have specifically localized biological matter on their abdomens.

Bees are known to perform a dance in the hive, taking the Earth’s gravitational field as reference. Foraging bees, when they return from a successful search for food, perform a dance whose orientation in relation to the vertical direction of the combs in the hive indicates to the other bees the location of the food source.

The angle between the direction of the dance and the vertical indicates the angle between the food source and the Sun.

Bees never ask for directions because they have an internal compass that guides them home!

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