Honey and bumble bees can’t fly at night. TikTok has shown us that.

Honey bees and bumble bees solely fly in the course of the day. 

This fascinating truth has come to gentle, so to talk, as a video of bees not having the ability to fly with out gentle has gone viral on TikTok and Reddit. The video captures dozens of bees plummeting to the underside of a laboratory container as quickly because the lights are turned off, and has over 19 million views since being posted March 14.

The video, captured and posted on Twitter in December 2021 by postgraduate pupil Hamish Symington, present bees being studied by fellow pupil Kristina Buch within the Cambridge College Botanic Backyard. That video has greater than 11 million views, too.

“I am shocked it is an on/off alternative for them – no sleek making an attempt to glide to land or something like that, they actually simply cease flying and plummet,” Symington mentioned in the tweet. “Absolutely that is extra harmful than conserving flying?”

Most bees, together with honey bees and bumble bees, can’t fly at night time. They’re diurnal, that means they solely fly and cross alongside pollen in the course of the day. Bees can crawl at night time, nevertheless.

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How do bees see?

Despite the fact that these bees can’t technically see, they will use the solar’s rays (polarized gentle) to information them, mentioned Quinn S. McFrederick, affiliate professor of entomology on the College of California Riverside.

Bees have compound eyes, one on every on the facet of their head, made up of 1000’s of small lenses. “So every of their eyes is definitely a set of many, many particular person islands,” McFrederick mentioned.

In addition they have three ocelli or easy eyes, above the compound eyes, that support in detecting gentle and motion.  

Some bees do have night time imaginative and prescient

Different bee species are crepuscular, which signifies that they’re able to seeing with little gentle. They fly throughout nightfall, night time and early morning to keep away from the warmth from the solar, in response to bee analysis web site Faculty of Bees.

Then, there are nocturnal bees, resembling Lasioglossum (Sphecodogastra) texana, or the sweat bee, that may fly when throughout full moons and half moons, the positioning says. 

A particular kind of forager bee referred to as Halictidae, which lives within the highlands of Panama, has tailored to have the ability to fly even with out the help of moonlight.

These bees collect nectar and pollen from particular crops which can be solely energetic throughout night time time as there’s much less competitors from different bugs.

These night-flying bees have totally different eyes than those that fly out in the course of the day. “These bees have advanced that sort of neurological trickery to have the ability to kind of amplify the sign that every photon sends to their mind,” McFrederick mentioned.

“Bees have advanced advanced methods to navigate in darkness,” he mentioned.